I tested a piece of a stone that looked like Kashmir White and (unsealed) it soaked up oil like a sponge. Because of how I am I wanted a stone that was impervious unsealed so I'd never have to worry about it, so I didn't get it.

I remember a number of posts here about BR saying that people didn't have any problem with it staining, hopefully someone will chime in.

Light stones tend to be more porous than darker ones. Because of this, most are resined. The resined stones will be essentially impervious to staining, but the unresined slabs will need to be sealed.

Every slab is different, so your best bet will be to get samples of the ones you like and stain test them. That's really the only way you can be sure of the properties of the particular slabs going into your kitchen.

We just tested Kashmere White last eveing with red wine. I forgot to ask the dealer if it was sealed but my guess is NO. The red wine stained very badly, one was left there a couple hours and the other overnight. Luckily my heart isn't set on a light stone - I think we'll go with soapstone and trade dings and scratches for permanent stains.

Don't give up so easily stephand! Our resined andromeda white countertops are virtually bulletproof. The morning after our holiday cocktail party, all the red wine, cranberry juice and marachino cherry splatters wiped right off. It's just a matter of looking/asking for slabs that are resined. We tested three white granites, two of which were resined, the third was not. The resined ones were stainproof, and the third, well, was not.

Here is a link that might be useful:

alku05 - Tell me more about this resin feature. Is this done before the slabs arrive at the warehouse? Will it be marked as such? I don't remember seeing any info on that last weekend but we only visited one warehouse as the others were closed for the holiday week. (a real disappointment since we arranged a paid babysitter so we could enjoy the granite shopping experience.)

Your kitchen is gorgeous!!

The resining is done when they mill and polish the granite, so it happens before the slabs are shipped to yards. Basically, they pour on the resin and then polish the surface of the slab. Almost all of the resin is removed; the only bit that remains is that trapped in the tiny pores of the stone.

Resined stone does not look or feel different than unresined stone. This can make it hard to find by just looking at the pretty side of the slabs. What you want to do is look at the raw edge. If the stone has been resined, often you'll see a shiny amber coating there, or sometimes it'll look like dripped varnish.

If you look on the edge of these resined BR slab, you can see the amber edge:

Here on the andromeda white slabs we chose, you can see the evidence of resining as varnish-like drip marks under the numbers but above the blue part:

Also a good granite yard worker should be able to show you slabs that have been resined.

Thanks for the info. I guess we did see resined slabs because we did notice the varnish type drips on several slabs. We thought they may have already been sealed.

Just as a data point, the highly absorbant stone that I tested had resin on the side, so I was really surprised that it was so sponge-like.

My experience is that seeing resin on the side of slab doesn't mean it won't stain, and not seeing it doesn't mean it will. I have three different stones (so far) and non of them were resined and none of them stained unsealed.