Is Wine Aged in Wheat-glued Oak Barrels Gluten-free?

Another commercial winemaker chiming in on the topic... non celiac. Coopers use a mixture of flour and water to seal the head of the barrel along the staves. My barrel supplier uses a rice flour at our direction to avoid any possibility of a gluten intolerant having an issue. I just got a call from someone complaining of getting 'sick' from my wine due to gluten intolerance. I was unable to convince her this was impossible. As mentioned earlier by the other winemaker, gluten, being a protein is highly unlikely to make it past clarification, fining, and filtration. It is my sincere belief that celiacs are sickly people in general and the mind is a powerful device that can manifest illness, pain, depression, anxiety to satisfy a subconscious need for attention. I'm sympathetic to the lifestyle but I resent the constant vilification from anecdotal evidence.

Another commercial winemaker chiming in on the topic... non celiac. Coopers use a mixture of flour and water to seal the head of the barrel along the staves. My barrel supplier uses a rice flour at our direction to avoid any possibility of a gluten intolerant having an issue. I just got a call from someone complaining of getting 'sick' from my wine due to gluten intolerance. I was unable to convince her this was impossible. As mentioned earlier by the other winemaker, gluten, being a protein is highly unlikely to make it past clarification, fining, and filtration. It is my sincere belief that celiacs are sickly people in general and the mind is a powerful device that can manifest illness, pain, depression, anxiety to satisfy a subconscious need for attention. I'm sympathetic to the lifestyle but I resent the constant vilification from anecdotal evidence.

You, Dominic are a jerk! I hope to find out what wine you make so as to avoid giving you one red cent. I wouldn't wish celiac on my own worst enemy but now I am reconsidering that because of your rude and insensitive comments. KARMA is a b%$@#!

I have been commercially making wine for 20 years. I keep getting questions from this crowd about 'wheat paste' used in wine barrels. You can find hundreds of websites that make this claim but I have been unable to find a single oak supplier who can confirm this. Even if there is some glue used in barrel productions do you know how impossible that would be to get into your wine? You breathe more gluten on a daily basis than you would drink if you consumed an entire 60 gallon barrel of wine. It's such a ridiculous myth ---- please inform yourselves and stop wasting wineries time asking this ridiculous question. On a more scientific note - gluten is a protein --- even if a wine was fermented completely from rye, almost all wines go through some type of protein stability which would drop the protein out of the wine prior to racking, filtering clarifying.. If this didn't happen you would have a haze precipitate on the bottom of the bottle - ie. protein instability. You could simply rack this off and drink what's left.

I hear what you are saying, but I have had a "reaction" to a Malbec reserve wine from Argentina and not other red wines. So maybe the aging in the barrel for reserve wines adds to a gluten level in the wine from the extended time held in the oak barrels? I am not sure, and I do understand that the wine in filtered and clarified prior to bottling as well. So for now I am going to drink red wines that do not bother me and try to replicate this problem with another reserve wine not made in the USA. PS- I love red wine and will not give it up!

Good article, great that you added test results. I think it is most likely that wine is gluten-free. Don't forget all you who say you get reactions that lots of gluten-free certified food also has gluten in it, it just has less than 20 parts per million by weight. That is still quite a considerable amount, as the body of evidence shows Coeliacs can cope with small levels of gluten. So drink red wine and be happy. After 5 years on a gluten-free diet I do not think it is so bad an affliction, there again I have had Leukemia, so maybe it is relative!