Smart Sipping: Understanding Calories and Sugar in Wine | Season 5: Ep 15

Dive into the world of wine with Sommelier Erin. In this episode she uncovers the secrets behind wine's calorie and sugar content, offering tips for selecting healthier options without compromising on taste. Whether you're a dry wine aficionado or a sweet wine lover, learn how to choose your next bottle wisely. Perfect for anyone looking to enjoy wine mindfully. #WineHealth #SommelierSecrets #MindfulDrinking 🍷

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Transcript

Erin: 0:00

Today. I'm diving into a topic that is on many people's minds. And I get asked about. All of the time. And if you have ever wondered about the sugar, Eric calorie content in some of your favorite wines, then trust me, you are not alone. And today I'm going to demystify the topics. So whether you're savoring your favorite glass of wine to just unwind at the end of the day, toasting to celebrate knowing about what's in your class can help you enjoy wine in healthy, balanced way. So if you're curious about sugar and calorie count in wine, then let's get started and dive right into today's episode. Hi everyone. And welcome to the wine shop talk. I'm your host, smelly Erin Rosar and I am so happy that you're here with me today. If we haven't met before, it's lovely to have you here. And if we have welcome back now, for those of you who are new, you should know that I've been a professional smelly for over 20 years now. And it's my passion or my privilege to make learning about wine. Not only fun and easy, but also practical meaning. I want to make sure that you leave every single episode with some real life practical tips that you can use. Right away to help you find wines that you're going to love and enjoy and be able to share with family and friends. I want you to think of me as your very own practical Somalia, and today's episode is all about practical, helpful tips, especially if you're looking at. Balancing your love for wine, with healthy lifestyle and how it all fits together. So to get us started on this topic, we first have to talk about how does sugar get into line and how do we count calories? Well, sugar comes from the grapes. So the grapes themselves, as they rape and fill up with water and sugar. And during fermentation, when that juice is squished out of the grapes, the yeast in the air, or on the grape skins, or maybe added by wine maker. Basically says thank you for the food source and starts to eat all of the sugar in the liquid. And this is what causes fermentation. So the yeast are going to eat the sugar and some wines actually will stop fermentation early because potentially the yeast kind of eat themselves to death. They get so full on all of that sugar. They just die out. We can also stop a fermentation. So as a wine maker, if I do want to leave some residual sugar just means leftover sugar. I have not let the wine for meant to dryness. And as a winemaker, I could stop east from eating sugar. And I can do that with temperature, with putting in another yeast. So there are different ways winemakers can do that. But just know that the sugar in wine comes from the grapes. We do not, we are not allowed to add sort of extra sugar into wine. There are special occurrences, especially in cooler climates where winemakers are allowed to add must unfermented grape juice. If there is so little sugar in the grapes, maybe it was a really cold year. The grapes ripe and very much. We do have some rules around wineries being able to add in a bit of extra juice to give basically a little punch of extra sugar to help that fermentation go, especially where we have minimum alcohol requirements, such as Germany, for example, but that's a whole other topic, but just know that. In winemaking you're not allowed to just dump extra sugar into your wine to make things happen. So the sugar comes from the grapes themselves. Warmer climate wines generally will have more sugar, the more sun and heat we have, the more sugar rises and sweetness rises in those grapes. So it's a basic rule of thumb to say that. Wines from warmer climates may have higher alcohol amounts because the more sugar you have, the higher alcohol. Then winds from cooler climates kill, have less sugar because obviously there's not as much sugar to ripen in those locations, the world. So something just to keep in mind, as we talk about some shopping tips. Now, how do we actually equate calories? So the calories in wine come from the alcohol content and residual sugars. So alcohol is calorie dense and it gives us about seven calories per gram. Whereas sugar provides a four calories per gram. So you can see where it's going to start to add up kind of quickly thus wines with higher alcohol amounts have higher sugar. So to put that in perspective, a standard five ounce glass of wine typically ranges between a hundred to 150 calories. But this is where the style of the wine can play a significant role. Your dry whites and reds. Think 70 on Blunck or Pune yr. Sit at the lower end of the range in regards to minimal sweetness or residual sugar. So they're going to be on the lower calorie range on the flip side, sweeter wines and four to five wines like Ms. Scattered to SD or ports, obviously fortified wine style climb higher up the calorie scale because of the residual sugar that are leftover. And in the course of four to five wines, we get also an extra boost of extra alcohol on top of it. Now on a bottle of wine, you'll see ABV this is alcohol by volume. And this is the volume measurement that we use to account for the amount of sugar and calories in wine. And I do want to say a caveat in that most wines. Are done on a formula of approximately 150 milliliters, but it is important to make sure that if you are really tracking calories, if it's really important, you're tracking your macros, you're training for something, make sure that the wine that you want to enjoy has used the formula base of 150 milliliters. Sometimes you'll see wineries use a bit of a different base amount, which is obviously going to Throw off the calorie volume in the wine. So know that as a standard, it's 150 milliliters that we use as a base amount of how much liquid we're using as our formula base. And this is going to give us the average between a hundred and 150 calories. But, like I said, if you are training for something where, you know, you're really watching the calories and your intake, then definitely you can always go to the winery website and take a look and just make sure how that alcohol by volume, the ABV of that wine is measured is developed. And then you'll have an even better understanding to be able to put into your macro tracker, for example. Now if we talk about sweet wine, so let's just do some averages. And I always say this part in quotes, but let's go through some standard wine styles and what you can expect. So dry white and red wines usually range between a hundred and 120. So this is your 70 a blocks in European wars. They're lowered and residual sugar. And that helps keep the calorie down. When we get into sweet wines, such as Ms. Scattered to Asti or off dry RISD. Reasonings the calorie count is going to go up. Obviously there's more residual sugar. And here we can go anywhere from 120 to 165 calories. Now fortified wine. So your reports and Sherri's Marsalas for example, here, you can go anywhere for three and a half ounce. So 103 milliliter glass, so smaller glass, but 150 calories to over 200 calories depending on the wine. So that you're trying. Now, if you love wine, but you're looking for something really low calorie, then sparkling wines are really going to be your friend. And you're looking for brute, which is going to mean dry on the label. And. And here you're going to be about a hundred to 125 calories. So sparkling wines are going to be some of the driest and lower sugar amounts. Now on the label, if you see sex, so S E C or Demi sec, meaning off dry, these are going to be sweeter. They're going to have more residual sugar leftover. And so those sparkling wines are going to have a creep up of the calories, but a general glass of beautiful sparkling wine with brute on the label. You're looking at about between a hundred and 125. Calories. Now let's talk about when you're shopping, how are you going to look for clues of what the calorie level is going to be like in a Y. Style. First of all, if you are looking at wine styles that are coming from a really warm climate. So, uh, Australia areas of Chilay perse of the United States, you potentially are going to have more sun, which is going to give us more alcohol, and then you're going to have higher calorie amounts. So these are going to be more sun equals generally fuller body, but also bigger calories. Cooler climate wine. So Oregon And Mars coming from France. For example, anywhere you have a cooler climate, this generally are going to be wines that are lower in calories as well. Like I said, sparkling wines are always going to have to be your friend for their lower calorie wines End. Don't forget that the label descriptors are going to be your friend. If on the back of the label, you're seeing words like ripe berries and juicy fruit. Notes and descriptions. You're probably into warmer climates with ripe. Juicy fruit. That's probably going to be a clue to, there may be higher calorie levels in that wine or higher sugar. There's also a clue as well that I always use in that if a wine is below 11.5 or 11% alcohol, that generally means that the wine has residual sugar left over in it. And why this is, is that a wine maker, for some reason, whether it's stylistic or whatever was happening that year, when you get a wine that's below 11% or 11.5% with the residual sugar, it means that the yeast didn't get a chance to eat all the sugar. And there's probably a touch of those yeasts still inside. And so you're into this. Off dry style of wine. So think of as 11% alcohol or 11.5, you'll see a lot of white Zinfandels for example, in that range, and this is going to be a clue that there's probably residual sugar in the wine, and it's going to be a little off dry, which means that it's going to be higher calories. So those are some great label clues to look for. You're going to be looking for those. Terms as a script of terms of ripe juicy, those words, that didn't note that it was in the sun and there's lots of delicious, ripe fruit flavors coming through, but also the alcohol level in that wine is going to give you a clue if it's been fermented to dryness or if there's a little bit of sugar, inside the wine. Of course, we have some label requirements, especially when we look at German wines and you're looking at styles like Liza or us, Lisa on the label. These are specific terms that basically tell you that they have left residual sugar in. The line on purpose so that it aligns with German wine labeling. So that's a whole other topic for another day to break down German labels, but know that we do have terms and areas in the world where we do have laws that have to be denoted on the label to match with the legal requirements of how much sugar in the wine, But what I really want you to take away from this episode is that there's something for everyone, not just for flavor profile, you enjoy a sort of sweet or after I wine styles, or you want something bone dry, or if you're tracking the wine sugar amount in calories, because you are tracking your lifestyle and maybe you're training for something. There's a wine out there that is perfect for you. That's going to fit in with your dietary preferences. So the next time you're browsing the wine aisle or picking out a wine at a restaurant. Remember what we've talked about today? Look for the descriptor words, check the amount of alcohol on the bottle to see if there may be some residual sugar. Look for warm climate wines. If you're looking for fuller body, but also potentially more alcohol means higher calories. And cooler climate wine styles for lower calories and generally less sugar. So those are some tips for you. And I get asked about this all the time and at different times a year, it seems to pop up, but I've been asked about calories and wine a couple of times already over the last few days. And so I thought it'd be a great topic to revisit here in this week's episode. So I hope that you have enjoyed a refresher or maybe this is new information for you and you now have new tools. Tools in your toolbox. So to speak, to help you find wise that you're going to like. Now as always, if you have any questions or comments about today's episode, Please reach out. You can reach me at hello. One girl academy.com or come say hi on Instagram or Tik TOK. And of course, if you haven't yet had a chance to take your wine pellet personality quiz. You'll find the link in the show notes below. It's a fun free, quick quiz, and you're going to find out all about the wine styles that you are going to love and enjoy. And end up with an entire booklet of information about wines to try and helpful words to use that when you are shopping. Now, if you are new, please feel free to like share and subscribe would love to have you with us every week. New episodes come out every Tuesday. And on that note, I want to wish you all a wonderful week. Cheers to you. Bye now.