Is wine gluten-free?
What you should know about wine, celiac disease and gluten sensitivity
Hello there! I'm Dr. Vinifera, but you can call me Vinny. Ask me your toughest wine questions, from the fine points of etiquette to the science of winemaking. And don't worry, I'm no wine snob—you can also ask me those "dumb questions" you're too embarrased to ask your wine geek friends! I hope you find my answers educational, empowering and even amusing. And don't forget to check out my most asked questions and my full archives for all my Q&A classics.
Dear Dr. Vinny,
Is wine gluten-free?
—Elena, Savannah, Ga.
Dear Elena,
Except in the rarest of cases, the answer is yes. Some wineries might go the extra step and get their wine labeled “gluten-free” by proving that their wine contains less than 20 parts per million (ppm) of gluten—but even wine not labeled as such should be gluten-free. In most winemaking, no gluten is used, and grapes do not contain gluten. Do be careful with wine-adjacent products, like wine coolers and flavored wines, which often do contain gluten.
There are a couple of steps in winemaking that could theoretically cause concern for cross-contamination with gluten products. The first is if a wine is stored in barrels that were sealed with wheat paste. The good news is that wheat paste has almost entirely been replaced with paraffin wax seals. Even if a wine is stored in a barrel sealed with wheat paste, the amount of gluten should be negligible, and well below that 20 ppm threshold.
Fining is the other winemaking step that could theoretically cause concern. Fining is when a cloudy wine is mixed with a fining agent—egg white, isinglass, bentonite clay and gelatin are common—that will cling to the suspended solids in the wine. Those solids then settle and drop to the bottom of the container, which makes it easy for the wine to then be separated from those solids.
The commonly used fining agents do not contain gluten. They contain other proteins, but not gluten. Wheat gluten can be used as a fining agent, but it’s not often used today.
Even if a winemaker’s preferred fining agent did contain gluten, the whole point of using a fining agent is to leave it behind before bottling. So it’s unlikely that any residual gluten would cross the threshold for posing a health risk. But it would be understandable to check if the wine was fined with wheat gluten before drinking it.
—Dr. Vinny
