Allegro Winery

Company email (August 2012):
"Our wines are more vegan-friendly than 90% of all the wines in this country, and 3/4 of what is used in our vineyard is organic. (We can't be certified organic, due to the really tight regulations on the term itself, but we're moving closer and closer.)

Having been a vegetarian for four years--as well as being married to one and having a boy who is nearly vegetarian--as well as having rescued five animals from shelters and given them lives in our home, I understand our relationship to animals better than most. Emery was mostly correct in characterizing our use of gelatin, but the actual fact is that since the 2004 vintage, I can only remember one wine (275 G of Chardonnay) that was fined with gelatin. (Gelatin is a unique fining agent used for one specific purpose, and there is no currently available substitute that can accomplish the same thing in the cellar.) If we hadn't fined that wine, we would have had to pour out the equivalent of 1375 bottles of wine or approximately $15,000 worth of wine.) And considering we have bottled around 100,000 gallons in that time, I think it's fair to say that we're pretty friendly to the vegan lifestyle. Obviously, in that perspective, it would have been easy to say that we are 100% vegan-friendly, but I always try to be as honest with our customers as possible."

Company email (July 2012):
"Gelatin is the only animal substance we use, and it is only on extremely rare occasions. Yes, it is used as a fining agent."

Company email (July 2012):
"Our wine is about %99.99 vegan friendly. In the last 5 years of production, less than 1% of our wine had minute traces of animal ingredients. The ingredient was gelatin, and it typically settles to the bottom during fermentation, and is not detectable in the finished wine.

We may make a Mead Wine in the future, which would contain honey, but that would be the only instance honey would be introduced into a wine."