Fish in Wine

Last night I was enjoying a relaxing night out with my new house mates and some friends at our local discussing everything and anything over our third bottle of rose, when someone decided to announce that wine contains traces of fish. This didn't go down too well with me especially as I was sipping the drink while she said it. Now, maybe I'm being a little bit ignorant, but isn't wine made of grapes? The thought of swallowing a fish bone and being rushed to A&E on a Friday night isn't my idea of a good time, so after carefully checking the glass (and bottle) for traces of the scaley creatures, I read the labelling and there was nothing to indicate that this product contained fish. To my relief I reassured my friends and happily carried on drinking. However, the conversation didn't end there. "It's true, it contains fish bladders".  At this point, there wasn't a dry person around the table thanks to the projectile wine pertruding from my mouth. I couldn't take it anymore so out came my phone and I was straight onto Google asking "does wine contain fish?" and there it was in black and white....yes! To my dismay, I continued to read how there is a protein in fish bladders used to improve the clarity of wine by removing unwanted compounds. I was relieved to learn these fish products do get removed in the overall filtering process, but like all food and drink, it is never fully possible that all are removed, hence the reason why some bottles do show the warning. With this cleared up, there was only one thing left to do. I shuddered as I looked at the empty bottle sitting infront of me, and like a piece of bait luring me in, I picked up my purse, walked to the bar...and bought another bottle!