One of the most frequent questions I am asked for during my wine tastings, is about how many calories a bottle or a glass of wine contains.
Now, more than ever, people enjoy having a glass of wine or two to stay positive and also to celebrate springtime and sunny days. And despite the current situation with Covid-19, we all want to stay in shape.
Calories in wine are produced both from alcohol and sugar: in particular alcohol adds more calories to the finished product (about seven calories per gram) than sugar does (about four calories per gram).
There are low-calorie wines – both naturally low-calorie and specifically produced to have lower calories – that keep you from having to think as deeply about how much you are drinking. Naturally low-calorie wines will be dry, low in alcohol, hovering around 10% alcohol by volume (abv).
Cooler winemaking regions usually produce lower-alcohol (therefore lower-calorie) wines because the grapes don’t produce as much sugar. Less sugar for yeast to ferment means less alcohol in the wine.
The other major source of calories in wine is from sugar. When grapes have a high natural sugar content, yeast doesn’t always get to all the sugar, leaving what is known as residual sugar in the final wine.
Less residual sugar means fewer calories, since each gram of sugar has four calories.
In short, if you are choosing a drier but more alcoholic wine over a sweeter but less alcoholic one, the more alcoholic wine will probably have more calories than the sweeter one.
To simplify, Gruner Veltliner, Muscadet, and dry Riesling are naturally low-calorie white wines. If you are more into reds, look for Barbera, Gamay, and low- alcohol Pinot Noir.
According to Frank Schieber, professor at the University of South Dakota, the standard amount of sugar is as follows (in grams per liter):
Based on what we just said about alcohol and sugar, a regular bottle of wine (750ml) has an average of 600 calories, more alcoholic and sweeter wines will have more than drier and less alcoholic.
For example:
A red wine (14,5% abv) will have around 610 calories per bottle, so 122 per serving (glass of 150ml). A less alcoholic red wine (12,5% abv) will have around 525 calories per bottle, so 105 per serving (glass of 150ml).
Talking about rosé, white and red wines – considering that usually red wines are more alcoholic – we can say that reds are usually more caloric than white or rosé.
While choosing the right wine for your body weight you can consider using this information about the style, anyway my suggestion is to always look at the percentage of abv (alcohol by volume) and choose the less alcoholic one.
The average calories per day needed for men is between 2000 and 2200 and for women is between 1600 and 1800, both not practising any sports. If on Quarantine days you happen to drink half a bottle of wine per day (so at least an average of 300 calories) and by the end of it you won’t put on too much weight, you may reconsider your drinking habits!
