Can vegetarians and vegans drink alcohol?

Before I go any further, don't forget that alcohol is a highly addictive drug that may not be particularly good for your health. Never drink to excess.  You will know when you have done this because you will more than likely state that you are never going to drink again, feel extremely thirsty the next morning, have a pounding head and feel nauseas. Perhaps drinking alcohol is not such a great idea, but if you still want to know the answer to the question in the title, then please read on. I myself do enjoy a drink or two, so was keen to get some answers.

You will not have to give up alcohol on either a vegetarian or vegan diet, but this is not where the story ends.

Most alcohol is vegan, ignoring the obvious ones that contain cream and other dairy products which does not make them vegan. Some beers and wines are clarified using fish products such as isinglass (isinglass is a substance obtained from the dried swim bladders of fish), others use egg albumen, casein, which is a milk derived product and some even use gelatine (made from boiling animal bones, skin and cartilage) in their processing, which makes them both non vegan and non vegetarian. To the best of my knowledge, vodka, gin, whiskey and rum are vegan.

It is a real minefield, and requires a lot of research on individual products to ensure a vegan friendly experience.  There are websites out there that have a data base of various producers products and state whether or not they are vegan friendly. Whilst I cannot vouch for its accuracy, Barnivore.com looks like a pretty good website for this purpose.

When I was wondering around a bottle shop recently I was going to ask if there was a vegan wine section, which on the face of it seemed like a reasonable request, but then I thought to myself if based on my research several wines are vegan friendly this would completely muck up the shops display and categories. Would they only have a specific wine in the vegan section and not for example in the sauvignon blanc section, or would it be duplicated in both?

The problem is that even within specific wine producers, they may have some wines that are vegan friendly, whilst others are not.  I am sure there are processing reasons for this, but you would have thought that if they were going to the trouble of making some that way that they could use the same process for all of their production.

The issue then becomes how can you differentiate between a vegan wine and a non vegan wine when you are perusing the bottle shop.  Perhaps some winemakers show it on the label, but if you have ever tried reading the small print on a wine label and are not under 25 with 20/20 vision, good luck with that. So even if you know that XYZ wine producers make some wines vegan, you cannot guarantee that they all will be. I can just imagine the reaction you will get if you ask a shop assistant if such and such a wine is vegan, particularly bearing in mind that wine producers are not legally required in most countries to list their ingredients and can include up to 50 different substances in the wine producing process.

Winemakers are however required to state where egg and dairy products have been used as they are allergens, so this at least is one red flag for vegans. I wonder if the eggs are free range or not? Perhaps I wont go down that rabbit hole or we could be here all day discussing the subject of egg production, and whether or not even vegetarians should be eating them. I am sure that a separate post will follow on this subject in due course.

I guess if there is a particular tipple that you are partial to, then the best course of action is to contact the producer and ask them to confirm if their products are vegan friendly, and hope that whoever deals with your enquiry is knowledgeable enough. This will also hopefully serve to reinforce the demand for vegan wines to the producers if they are receiving a steady number of enquiries on the subject.