Wine’s residual sugar can wreak havoc on calorie counting — and health

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/06/2014 (4104 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Residual sugar.’

It’s a term frequently bandied about by wine professionals. And while what it means seems relatively obvious — to put it most simply, it’s the sugar that’s not converted into alcohol during the fermentation process — its implications can be something one might not immediately consider.

I discovered a few weeks ago just how large a role residual sugar can play in the calorie counts of people who are enjoying a glass or two while they’re trying to watch their diets. And since it really surprised me, it spurred me to do some further research on my own, the results of which I found quite amazing.

Folks often want to know how many calories are in a glass of wine. And despite our conversion to metric many years ago, I’m going to work with ounces, because no menu or server or bartender says, “We offer 180 millilitre or 270 millilitre or 360 millilitre glasses.” They say six, eight or 12 ounces.

Anyway, I usually operate on the notion that a 26-ounce bottle of dry wine has about 540 calories, making the average 6.5 ounce glass of dry wine about 135 calories.

Alcohol certainly contains calories, but some lower-alcohol wines that still taste sweet will come out even, since less alcohol means fewer calories from that source, which balances the greater number of calories that come from the larger amount of sugar.

Before I get started making comparisons here, I need to state that I always make it a policy not to slag particular wines in this column. If I like something, you’ll read about it. If I don’t like it, it makes no sense to me to publicly criticize a product that others might enjoy.

But by the same token, I believe that the best consumers are educated consumers, and they have the right to know what is or isn’t in what they’re eating or drinking.

Witness the great hue and cry some years ago about fat content and sodium in the foods we purchase and eat. That wonderful and necessary great uproar from a few determined souls has changed the way foods are produced, the contents of restaurant meals (particularly those from fast-food establishments) and the way we shop. Many of us read labels in detail now, and we want to know exactly what we’re getting, despite the attempts of some manufacturers to disguise what is really in their products.

I’m by no means suggesting that wine producers are trying to put one over on the public. Maybe some of them are, but I prefer to believe they’re not. Call me naïve if you like — that’s probably legitimate. One need only look at the lengths to which the big tobacco companies have gone to keep people addicted to their deadly products to realize that many commercial entities focus on little else other than their bottom lines.

However, the topic at hand is wine. And the research I did was revelatory to me, so I wanted to share it with you.

I was amazed by the differing amounts of residual sugar in beverages that are quite popular. Dry reds and dry whites have the lowest residual sugar, usually about one to three grams of sugar per one litre of wine. And since there are approximately four calories in one gram of sugar, that’s not much to worry about.

Here’s an easy(ish) method to determine how many calories a person is getting from wine. Take the number of ounces in your portion, multiplied by the percentage of alcohol, times 1.6. So, for example, let’s use 6.5 (ounces — a quarter-bottle) x 13 (it’s the number in the percentage that matters for this calculation) x 1.6. That gives us a total of 135.2 calories per glass (based on a glass being a quarter-bottle), which isn’t too bad.

But use the Internet to find out how much residual sugar is in your favourite wines, and the differences can be quite staggering. For example, this formula determines that one of my favourite reds, the J. Lohr Seven Oaks Cabernet Sauvignon from California, has 140.4 calories a glass. Consider the residual sugar, which is only 0.355 grams per glass, and that adds not even two calories, for a grand total of about 142 calories. Which I can live with. No hesitation.

But when one calculates the same for Apothic Red, another California product that is much sweeter than J. Lohr, but beloved by many, the numbers increase a bit, at least from a caloric point of view. The formula gives us 135 calories a glass, but add in the much more considerable amount of residual sugar — 4.1 grams per glass — and it ends up being 151 calories per glass.

Nine or 10 calories per glass may not seem like much, but add that up over the course of a week or a month and, depending on how much you drink, it can be significant. Take a look at such beverages as the Barefoot Sweet Red, and our formula shows that a glass starts at 109.2 calories. But add the residual sugar — a whopping 15 grams per glass — we end up with 169 calories.

Again, lower alcohol, which the Barefoot Sweet Red has (10.5 per cent) saves it to a degree, but the residual sugar ups the ante considerably.

These results would probably seem more dramatic if I compared calories per bottle as opposed to calories per glass. But the fact that between the J. Lohr and the Barefoot, we’re talking a difference of 27 calories a glass, and consequently 108 calories per bottle, seems a disparity worth noting.

And I may just hang out with the wrong people, but I don’t know too many folks who stop at just one glass, even though for health reasons, it’s probably a good idea.

Anyway, since sugar is considered the current Public Enemy No. 1 in terms of our health, I think it’s important to know what we’re drinking, and just how much sugar is in some of our favourite beverages.

So keep sipping — and perhaps, start counting!