Everywhere you go you see calorie counts – the grocery store, Starbucks, print ads, Instagram ads, even fast food restaurants. But where you don’t usually see them is on wine bottles. And that can lead to a lot of questions.

Luckily, I’m here to not only ask those questions but also to answer them!

So how many calories are in wine?

That answer really depends on the wine’s style. Most dry wines fall in the 110 to 150 calories per five-ounce (standard) serving range. Sweet wines can be 150 to 250 calories or more.

In general:

Where do calories in wine come from?

If you look at the data above, it isn’t too hard to figure out where the calories come from. The two culprits are alcohol and sugar.

Alcohol has seven calories per gram. That’s almost as much as fat (at nine calories per gram.) Since dry wines have very little sugar, most of their calories come from the alcohol.

Sugar has four calories per gram, and that adds to the alcohol calories, and that increases the total calories in the wine.

But it is a balancing act. Sometimes sweet wines with more sugar have much lower alcohol so it is possible that a sweet wine can have fewer calories than a high-alcohol wine. Plus a standard pour of a sweet wine like Sauternes or Port is usually smaller than that of dry wines. Pour size matters.

Let’s compare a few dry wines at a standard five-ounce pour:

• A dry Riesling with 11% ABV = ~110 calories
• A 13.5% ABV Pinot Noir = ~130 calories
• A Cabernet Sauvignon with 15% ABV = ~150 calories

And a couple sweet wines at a standard sweet wine three-ounce pour:

• Sauternes (alcohol is typically 13-14%, sugar content is high) = 120-180 calories
• Ruby Port (alcohol is typically 19-20% since it if fortified with an additional grape spirit, high sugar content) = 180-240 calories

If these sweet wines were poured like dry wines as five-ounce pours, their calorie count would be 200-300 for Suternes and 300-400+ for Port!

(Stay tuned and subscribe below to see a future post on how sweet wines are made. You’ll completely understand why the alcohol content can be so different in sweet wines and also how the sugar stays in sweet wines as opposed to dry wines.)

Which wines tend to be lower in calories?

At this point we’re doing pretty simple deduction and math. Wines that are dry and have a lower alcohol content are going to have fewer calories. This is why reading the label to check the alcohol content is important, at least for those who are counting calories.

In general, look for:

• Brut sparkling wine
• Pinot Grigio
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Albariño
• Dry Riesling

Which wines tend to be higher in calories?

In general:

• Port
• Sauternes
• High-alcohol Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, or Zinfandel
• Ice wine

Serving Size Matters

As we saw above in our sweet wine three-ounce pour versus dry wine five-ounce pour example, serving size definitely matters.

Keep in mind that a standard serving size, which is what you’ll get in most restaurants, is five ounces. But when you’re at homeware are you pouring just five? You might be surprised. 

Most home pours are six to eight ounces. Your 130-calorie five-ounce glass of Pinot Noir suddenly becomes over 200 calories when it’s an eight-ounce glass!

How does wine compare to other alcoholic drinks?

The answer to this question is a little complicated because we need to compare generally-accepted standard serving sizes.

• Wine – 5 ounces
• Beer – 12 ounces
• Spirits – 1.5 ounces

When comparing wine to beer, wine tends to sit somewhere in the middle.

• Light beer: 90-110 calories
• Wine: 110-150 calories
• Regular beer: 140-200 calories
• Craft IPA: 180-300 calories

Comparing wine and spirits gets even trickier. On the surface, spirits look like they have the calories advantage over wine and beer.

• 1.5 oz vodka: ~98 calories
• 1.5 oz. whiskey: ~105 calories
• Wine: 110-150 calories

But spirits are more often drunk with other things added like soda, juice, simple syrup, liqueurs, and cream. And that’s where the calories really start to add up. A typical espresso martini has between 200 and 280 calories, with less than half of the calories coming from the vodka!

Overall, wine can be a lower-calorie choice, depending on what type of wine you choose, when ordering your next drink.

Whether you’re counting calories or not, knowing more about what you’re drinking is important and can help you make more informed decisions.

So calories aside, is wine is a healthier option than beer or spirits? Well, that’s a blog post for another day!