How Many Calories Are in a Bottle of Red Wine?

Between 600 and 700 for a typical supermarket bottle. A 175ml glass of 13.5% Cabernet is about 160 calories, which is a packet of crisps.

Share a bottle over dinner and you've each had a decent-sized meal before the food turns up.

It doesn't have to work like that, and the reason why is simpler than most people assume.

What's actually in the glass

Two things make wine calorific, and one of them does most of the work.

Alcohol is 7 calories a gram, not far off fat. Residual sugar, the grape sugar left over when fermentation stops, is 4. There's nothing else in dry wine worth counting.

So a 13.5% red carries more calories than an 11% one purely because there's more alcohol in it, before sugar enters into it at all. And a sweeter wine at the same strength carries more again. Get both wrong and you're at 160 a glass. Get both right and you're closer to 80.

That's the whole mechanism. No trick to it.

Calories in red wine by style

Grape variety is a rough guide at best. What it really tells you is climate: Zinfandel and Malbec ripen in hot places, so they arrive at the winery with more sugar to convert and finish at higher strengths. Pinot Noir comes from cooler ground and finishes lighter. It's the ABV doing the work, not the grape name.

Which is why the number on the bottle beats any chart, including this one.

What ours look like

Every red we sell is dry, at 0g of sugar per glass, so the only variable left is strength. The lightest sit around 76 calories a glass, which works out near 456 for the bottle against 630 for a mainstream Cabernet.

That's roughly a third off, and nothing has been watered down to get there.

Under 80 calories a glass

Middleweight

Full-bodied, still under a standard glass

If you only try one

El Ninot de Paper. A Grenache Shiraz from Valencia, named after the papier-mâché figures they burn at Las Fallas, and one of our bestsellers. Soft, fruit-forward, 76 calories a glass, and it doesn't taste like a compromise.

If you want something with more weight to it, Don Aparo Malbec at 91 calories is still comfortably under the 108 you'd get from a supermarket Malbec. Another bestseller, and the one to reach for with steak.

Buying more than a couple? The red wine cases work out cheaper per bottle than buying singles.

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• Low calorie red wine
• Merlot, Malbec, Tempranillo, Syrah
• Red wine cases
• Keto wine: 0g sugar, 0g carbs
• Zero sugar wine

Please drink responsibly.

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