Stocking up on vegetarian options.

(From Off Licence News)

Q I am gradually increasing the number of organic wines on my shelves. Are vegetarian wines still talked about these days and should I bother with them? A Vegetarian Week takes place from May 19-25, so it's a topical issue. Although you're right to suggest that organics are more in the spotlight these days, vegetarian wines are still sought after by the estimated 4 million UK residents who avoid animal products in their diets.

Consumers don' always get a helping hand from the labels of the drinks they're buying because alcoholic products are exempt from the ingredients lists that apply to other foodstuffs.

The Vegetarian Society points out that all categories of alcohol can contain animal products. "Cask-conditioned ales need fining to clear the material (especially the yeast) held in suspension in the liquid," it explains. "This is invariably done by adding isinglass, derived from the swim bladders of certain tropical fish, especially the Chinese sturgeon, which acts as a falling suspension. "Bottled naturally, conditioned beers will not always have been treated with isinglass. Canned beers and some bottled beers are pasteurised and usually passed through chill filters. However, a considerable number of breweries still use isinglass to clear their pasteurised beers. "Most of the main brands of cider will have been fined using gelatine. "With wine, it is again in the fining process that animal -derived ingredients make an appearance. Finings can be isinglass, gelatine, egg albumen, modified casein (from milk), chitin (derived from the shells of crabs or lobsters) or ox blood (rarely used today). But alternatives do exist in the form of bentonite, kieselguhr, kaolin and ...