Alzar Sauvignon Blanc, 755ml

Product Information

Things are getting better for vegan and vegetarian wine-drinkers, however. More winemakers are choosing to use mineral and plant-based fining agents, from bentonite clay and silica gel to plant casein. Alzar in Spanish means 'to raise'; just like the sun over the Andes mountains, soaring over the vineyards of Mendoza where the Malbec grapes grow. Regional Information Green and pleasant Tasmania has become one of Australia’s best places for pinot noir, and this is a wonderfully silky fruit-driven style, all plump fresh strawberry with just a touch of the grape’s trademark forest-floor; great alone or with beetroot dishes.

Although it would be a mistake to equate vegan or vegetarian with organic when it comes to wine, Aldi’s bargain tinto from near Valencia satisfies both demands with a bold-berry character, and an easy, smoked paprika-partnering succulence.Apostolos Thymiopoulos, one of the stars of modern Greece, has fashioned a delightful summer white from the exotically fleshy malagousia and the white juice (but not skins) of red grape xinomavro: blossom and tropical fruit salad in a juicy but fresh style for veggie Greek meze.

The much-abused north-eastern Italian red wine style is here presented as the wonderfully pure, fluent, light and graceful cherry-fruited delight it always should be, its bright acidity a natural partner for any tomato-based dish, from pasta to ratatouille. Importers and supermarkets have also got better at sourcing, labelling and marketing vegan and vegetarian wines. Marks & Spencer leads the way in this respect, with 384 vegan-friendly bottles; the Co-op, long a pioneer of transparency in wine ingredients, now has 77. So it’s now possible to find these wines everywhere, making my selection of the following 20 vegan bottles much easier than it would have been even two years ago. If the switch from meat and dairy has left you with a craving for umami that can only be partly sated by mushrooms, soy and nutritional yeast, dry sherry is here to help, this breezy light classic from Sanlúcar offering salted-nut savouriness and a whiff of the sea.A white blend of Champagne’s two red grapes (pinot meunier and pinot noir), this is always one of the best supermarket sparklers around, with flavours of raspberry, redcurrant and digestive biscuit in its deep, creamy but elegantly racy palate.