Low cal wine??????

Wine is already relatively low calorie for alcohol. It varies a bit by wine, but you're looking at about 25 calories per average ounce (white or red), so 125 calories would be a good estimate for a 5 ounce pour.

Skinny Girl makes a lower cal wine. 100 calories for 5 ounces. Also, if you want to spend some money, Dry Farm Wines has low cal, no sugar, no carbs. Delicious too.

Calories in wine come from sugar, and sugar does two things to wine: makes it sweet, and makes it heavy/full-bodied. Low-cal wines will be light and dry--think sauvignon blanc and beaujolais, but not riesling or malbec. If it tastes sweet or if it feels thick like orange juice (or thicker) when you swish it in your mouth, it's gonna be higher in calories.

Also, this isn't always the case, but higher-ABV wines are usually higher in calories (because they usually have more sugar). There are a lot of sugary low-abv wines and wine products out there too, though, so be careful.

Most low-cal wine brands decrease calories by decreasing the alcohol content. Skinny Girl is the exception--but a glass of skinny girl is only about 20cal less than your average glass of wine. So why not go with the real stuff?

I found that you can fit a glass of red dry wine on any calorie budget if you want / plan to. You can also fit it in a very low carb (<20 g net) mealplan. And that's for a full-bodied wine glass.. not worth compromising on the good stuff if you're doing it anyway!

kpsyche wrote: »

carolsoules wrote: »

Calories in wine come from sugar<snip>

Actually, by weight, more of the calories in wine are from alcohol than sugar... by far. Per 100g the average amount of sugar in wine is less than 1g (about 4 calories). Alcohol is between about 9% to 16% (some have more and some have less alcohol than this). So, over 100 calories from the alcohol content alone. So: 4% of the calories come from sugar and 96% from the alcohol. Therefore the only real way make a difference is to drink wine with the alcohol removed.

I should've been more specific, I guess. I meant -ultimately- the calories all come from sugar. Sugar is the input that the fermentation process uses to produce alcohol, which is why higher ABV usually means higher sugar. Sugar left over from the fermentation process produces sweetness and heavy mouthfeel--indicating extra sugar on top of the alcohol, making the wine higher calorie. End of the day, all the calories in wine start as sugar and so the amount of sugar used at the start of the fermentation process is what you need to look at to judge a wine's full calorie content.