{"id":10476,"date":"2018-05-05T16:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.xtrawine.com\/?p=10476"},"modified":"2018-12-07T18:00:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T17:00:02","slug":"wine-and-calories-everything-that-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.xtrawine.com\/en\/wine-and-calories-everything-that-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Wine and Calories \u2013 Everything That You Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re an Italian wine lover who\u2019s watching their figure, there\u2019s probably one question on your mind.<\/p>\n

Can I drink wine without gaining weight?<\/p>\n

The simple answer is yes, of course. You can drink or eat anything as long as you make it part of a balanced diet or your exercise enough to burn off the calories that you consume. But that\u2019s probably not the answer that you\u2019re looking for. Instead, you probably want to know about the amount of calories in a glass, or bottle, of wine so that you can make dietary decisions that will help you to achieve your long-term goals.<\/p>\n

This article is going to approach the issue from two angles. Firstly, we\u2019re going to look at how calories and wine are linked so that you know what to look out for when you\u2019re watching what you eat. Secondly, we\u2019ll round the article off with a look at some tips to help you incorporate wine into a healthy diet.<\/p>\n

The Wine And Calorie Facts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before looking at the diet part, let\u2019s look at some of the facts about calories in wine.<\/p>\n

Fact #1 \u2013 Wines With Higher Alcohol Contents Contain More Calories<\/em><\/p>\n

This is an unfortunate fact to accept if you\u2019re a lover of wines that have high alcohol volumes. Unfortunately, it\u2019s also completely true. A wine with a high alcohol content contains more calories than one with a low content.<\/p>\n

It all comes down to the calorie count of ethanol, which is the technical name for alcohol. A single gram of ethanol contains seven calories.<\/p>\n

So, how does that work out when you look at wine by the glass?<\/p>\n

A small glass of wine with a 12% volume contains about 14 grams of ethanol. That makes 98 calories for a small glass of wine. Of course, drinking a larger glass means you\u2019re drinking more grams of ethanol. This raises the calorie count. Moreover, drinking a stronger wine also means that you\u2019re drinking more ethanol.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s the flipside to this too. Wines with low alcohol volumes also have lower calorie counts. This means you can drink such wines a little more freely.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s worth noting that a couple of regular glasses of wine could amount to about 250 calories when you only consider ethanol. That\u2019s not an insignificant amount of calories when combined with the other foods and drinks that you consume during the day.<\/p>\n

Fact #2 \u2013 Residual Sugars Add to This Calorie Count<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, ethanol isn\u2019t the only thing that adds calories to your glass of wine. You also have to think about the residual sugars that are in the wine. The more sugar that a wine contains, the heavier its calorie count will be.<\/p>\n

Again, sugar isn\u2019t something that you can avoid with a glass of wine. After all, wine is made using grapes, which have their own natural sugars. Moreover, the sugars play a large role in determining the overall flavour of the wine.<\/p>\n

A gram of sugar contains about four calories. And you\u2019re going to have to add that onto the calorie count that you get from the ethanol.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, most dry wines contain very little sugar. Some contain as little as a gram, which means that you\u2019re only adding four calories to the 125 or so that comes from the ethanol.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s when you venture towards the sweeter wines that you start to run into some issues. Some wines contain as many as 150g per litre, with others managing to reach the 300g mark. That\u2019s a huge amount of sugar to add to your average glass.<\/p>\n

A small glass of wine could contain between 15g and 30g of residual sugar in such cases. That\u2019s between 60 and 120 calories to add onto whatever comes from the ethanol content.<\/p>\n

All of this leads us to a useful group of generalisations that you can use to determine the alcohol content of your wine. They go as follows:<\/p>\n