Let's get real, college students really love their wine, be it red or white, bottled or boxed. You can pair wine with almost any kind of food, from BBQ to cookies. However, some really weird items, including animal byproducts, might be used to produce the alcoholic beverage we all know and love.
A lot of wine makers use a process called "fining", where they add a certain substance or mixture to remove cloudiness and "off" flavors and colors from the wine. Some of the most popular fining agents are made from animal by-products such as gelatin, which is made from animal bones. Other popular agents include isinglass (made from fish bladders), and fish oil.
Sometimes, even ox blood has been used as a fining agent for wines. However, using animal blood in fining has been banned in the EU and U.S. since 1997, over fears surrounding mad cow disease. As more filtering agents have become popular and available, the use of blood has dwindled.
Although it is safe to drink wine that has been filtered with animal by-products, vegans and vegetarians might want to be careful selecting wines. Those animal by-products that are used in fining can actually be absorbed into the wine in very small quantities, although they would only be found in trace amounts.
If any vegans or vegetarians are worried about getting their wine fix now, don't worry; there are plenty of wines out there that use filtering agents that are not derived from animals. Unfiltered wines are also vegan friendly. You can find a list of vegan-friendly wines here.