Vegan Wine

So I am back from my training course in Brighton and it was so nice to be soemwhere that vegan food is widely available. Of course you need to know where to go but that doesn't take long to find out. Waitrose was handy for a quick hummus, carrot and salad sandwich, the Sanctuary cafe beautiful for home made vegan soups and salads and the selection of thai restaurants with so much choice of vegan, especially tofu dishes was lovely. Paskins Town House where I stayed was a delight and possibly make the best vegan breakfasts going...but enough of that! Today I want to talk about something else....Wine!

I never stopped to think about what was in the wine I drink. Usually I think carefully about everything, especially the food I eat as so many animal parts turn up in the least expected things and clothes and shoes need to be checked out thoroughly for animal skins etc but wine, well, wine is just grapes isn't it?

NO!!!

I watched a documentary about what was in wine and I must say I was and still am horrified! Not only at the amount of sugar and additives I have been gulping down but also how un-vegan most alcohol is. I have, until yesterday, been drinking Guinness twice a week as I discovered last year that it was an easier cure for my low iron than using iron tablets (and no, the low iron isn't because I don't eat steak as my mother and grandmother, huge meat consumers, both have this too) yet now I have learnt that stout is fined using fish bladders. Yum. So, no more Guinness for me. Well, at least I can enjoy a glass of wine. Um. No, actually. Most wines too are fined using fish bladders, or if not, using egg whites. Some wines even contain traces of milk. Put you off? Yes, did me too. So what do we vegans do? I have looked around and found a few sites which list vegan wines, usually listed by which Supermarket you can get them. It doesn't help me so much seeing as here in Norway you can only buy wine from the government wine store and they have only a limited selection of which I have no idea if they will contain traces of animal parts and secretions or not. I did send them an email two days ago but no reply as of yet and I am not hopeful of any reply at all (that's how some things work here). So if you know of a truly informative website which lists many vegan wines please let me know and I can email the goverment store and request them.
Of course, I could go teetotal and cut out all alcohol (some vodkas and other spirits also use animal parts in the processing by the way) but I don't really want to.... but I won't make animals suffer for my wants so we will have to see...!