What’s the Deal with Low Cal Wine?

So it happened to me. I bought a bottle of low cal wine by mistake. It was a Kim Crawford Sauv Blanc for a summer party. Sure there was a big 70 on the label, but it could mean anything. Calories were the last thing on my mind. In any case, I didn’t realize the oopsie till I was cleaning up post party. Before I share my thoughts on the low cal wine, let’s go into how wine calorie count works. 

Kim Crawford low cal Sauv Blanc

Alcohol and Carbs

There are two main sources of calories found in alcoholic beverages: alcohol and sometimes carbs. Per CDC guidelines, a standard drink contains 0.6 ounces or 14 grams of pure alcohol. This translates generally to:

• 12 ounces of beer with 5% alcohol by volume (ABV)
• 5 ounces of wine with 12% ABV
• A shot or 1.5 ounces of liquor or distilled spirits (80-proof or 40% ABV)

Considering that every gram of alcohol yields about 7 calories, one standard serving of an alcoholic beverage has 98 calories just from the alcohol alone.

Alcohol by Heshan Perera on Unsplash

Now, let’s add the carbs. One gram of carbs yields about 4 calories. Depending on the style of beer or wine, the amount of carbs may vary widely. A Pilsner may have about 12 grams of carbs per serving while a Belgium Fruit Lambic could have 25 grams. As for wine, 5 ounces of dry wine may have 1 gram of carbs whereas 2 ounces* of dessert wine may have 13 grams. Distilled spirits on the other hand have no carbs.

* Note that a non-fortified dessert wine has the same ABV as a dry wine. I chose 2 ounces for a serving of dessert wine, which is below the 14 grams of alcohol per serving guideline. However, a small amount of sweet wine goes a long way.

Sugar by Elena Leya on Unsplash

Based on that, one could approximate that:

• 12 ounces of Pilsner have 146 calories (48 from carbs + 98 from alcohol)
• 12 ounces of Belgium Fruit Lambic have 198 calories (100 from carbs + 98 from alcohol)
• 5 ounces of dry wine have 102 calories (4 from carbs + 98 from alcohol)
• 2 ounces of non-fortified dessert wine have 91 calories (52 from carbs + 39 from alcohol)
• A shot of distilled spirit only has 98 calories, all from alcohol

More Alcohol

Until recently, the trend of alcohol content in wine has been “more is better.” The ABV of a table wine rose from 12% in the 1990’s to over 14% today. The London International Vintners Exchange or Liv-ex that tracked tens of thousands of bottles of wine shared that the rise in ABV was evident across major wine regions. Burgundy is the only region where the increase is more restrained.

This trend toward the big alcoholic wine is attributed in part to climate change. As vineyard temperature rises, grapes ripen with a higher sugar content. Since sugar converts to alcohol during fermentation, this results in a higher ABV wine. The other driver of a higher alcohol wine is the market demand for international style (or some would argue “Parkerized”) wine. Robert Parker’s 100-point wine rating system has influenced vineyards and wineries all over the world to produce wine that is high in alcohol and tannins with lower acidity and in-your-face bold flavors.

Less Alcohol

However, with the new generation of wine consumers, there is a move away from the international style to natural wine, where ABV generally runs in the 10-12% range. Millennials and drinking-age Gen Z also tend to prioritize what they understand to be healthy living. To them, calories matter more than complexity in wine. According to Impact Databank, while the US wine market volumes continued to drop for the third consecutive year in 2023, low calorie wines were posting double-digit growth.

Some of early entrants of to “healthier” wine market include Avaline and Bev. Soon the big commercial mass wine producers such as Kim Crawford and Bota Box also jumped on the band wagon to offer lower calorie options. For Kim Crawford’s 70-calorie Sauv Blanc, this means dropping the ABV from 12.5% to 7% using a technology called Spinning Cone Column (SCC).

Less Taste?

In 2021, the National Library of Medicine published a study on Techniques for Dealcoholization of Wines: Their Impact on Wine Phenolic Composition, Volatile Composition, and Sensory Characteristics. The research looks at different technologies (of which SCC is one) and the different points of the winemaking process where dealcoholization may take place. Almost twenty wine samples were used in the experiment.

Despite efforts to preserve and/or recover as much of the wine aroma and flavors during the dealcoholization process, there was a loss in total volatile aroma compounds by 4-18% depending on the wine. The composition of these compounds are critical to the overall aroma and flavor of the wine. As a result, the reduced alcohol wines exhibit flavor imbalance, a lack of body, increased astringency, bitterness and acidity compared to original wines. The experiment also suggested that at around 2% reduction in ABV, the drop in wine quality became increasingly perceptible.

Here are my thoughts on the Kim Crawford’s 70-calorie Sauv Blanc

I tasted the wine both prior to and after I discovered my mistake. In the first case, I thought the wine tasted different from the other Kim Crawford I have had in the past and wrote it off as a bad vintage or the result of increased mass production. I became more intentional in my tasting when I realized that it was a low cal wine. It still smelled like a Marlborough Sauv Blanc and has the same acidity and brightness on the palate. However, the flavors seemed muted and diluted. It was after all a 5-6% reduction in ABV. 

My Verdict: Since I don’t drink a huge quantity of wine (although I do enjoy a glass everyday), wine quality matters more to me than calories. Sure, it means that I am consuming 50 calories more than I need. But I can live with that. On the other hand, I will always pick a diet soda over the regular. I don’t drink enough soda to differentiate the taste of one over the other so I will save the calories. What about you? What will you choose?

Screaming Eagle? Screaming Deal?

I was looking over the wine list at my favorite local Italian restaurant when the owner's selection caught my eye.

2011 Screaming Eagle $3,900

Credited as the trailblazer for Napa cult wineries, Screaming Eagle was founded by Jean Phillips, a former realtor with a knack for good soil. In 1986, she bought a 57-acre vineyard in Oakville. While Phillips sold most of her grapes to nearby Napa wineries, she kept an acre of Cabernet Sauvignon for her personal winemaking.

Screaming Eagle, the most expensive Napa wine

A few years later, Phillips decided to go into commercial winemaking and hired Heidi Barrett to be her winemaker. Barrett is a second-generation Napa winemaker and wife of Bo Barrett of Chateau Montelena fame. At that time, she was already a rising star with a couple of Robert Parker 100-points from a consulting gig with Dalla Valle.


In 1995, Phillips released the first vintage of Screaming Eagle. The 1992 Cabernet Sauvignon was a hit, scoring 99 points from Robert Parker. Both ladies became an overnight phenomenon.

The winery is not open to public

With continued accolades and production kept low at around 500 cases per vintage, the demand for the celebrated wine sky-rocketed. A mailing list was quickly established, and only members of the list were able to purchase the wine directly from the winery. The members-only price started at $75 per bottle, which was high at that time. It then increased to $125 a bottle, making Screaming Eagle the most expensive wine in the Valley.

By the time Phillips sold the winery to Stan Kroenke and Charles Bank in 2006, the members-only price was $300 a bottle. Today, the wait to get on the Screaming Eagle mailing list is rumored to be a few decades long. If you are patient enough to get on the mailing list, you get to purchase Screaming Eagle at $850 a bottle, a screaming deal since the aftermarket price averages three to four times that. And the restaurant price... you do the math!

Personally, I have not tasted Screaming Eagle. At that price, it will be a very special day if I do. My friends, who were fortunate enough to have it, definitely thought highly of it.

So what you would consider to be a screaming deal for Screaming Eagle? I have my number. What is yours?

Wine Clubs and Member Lists

If you frequent wine country or enjoy winery tours, it is likely that you have been seduced into a wine club membership. The more you drink, the harder it is to resist the temptation.

Truth be told, there are many perks to joining a wine club. There is usually no upfront fee for joining, and you can often terminate membership at any time. You just pay for the wine purchased with membership discount, which is often in the area of 10-20%. The catch is that there is usually a commitment of a certain number of bottles per year and sometimes in multiple releases. Each wine club may vary in the flexibility to mix and match the wines for each allocation, so that is something to which you want to pay attention.

Crates of wine in storage

The other big draw of a wine club is the limited releases that are offered exclusively to club members. This may happen when the winemakers are experimenting with a new varietal, blend, or way of making wine in small production. In other cases, the winery may keep a library of cellar-worthy wines to be released only to its members in later years so as to showcase the aging potential. Finally, there are special events and release parties, when winemakers unveil new releases with amazing food pairings.

If you don't live close to a wine region, check out your local wine shop to see if it offers a wine club. Our local wine shop, West Seattle Wine Cellars, offers six different monthly clubs, ranging from  easy-drinking to region-specific, like Champagne, Washington, and Oregon. The collective buying power from wine clubs allows the shops to have access to certain wines that would otherwise be hard to come by. Additionally, there is a club member's discount for wine purchases.

Then there are member lists. These are often offered by high-end or boutique wineries to give members first dibs on their wines at membership price before they are released to the secondary market. There is no allocation commitment, but members stay on the list as long as they make purchases. A lapse in purchases within a predefined amount of time, typically two consecutive years, may cause you to be dropped from the list. These wineries are usually not open to the public although some offer tours to members by appointment.

Now the danger of wine club and member list memberships is that you can end up with more wine than you need. At which point, it is time to say goodbye to some of them. In the past decade, I have gone through close to a dozen club and list memberships. Today, I am down to two wine club memberships and one member list. Here's the scoop on what I have.

Brady Cellars vertical tasting

Brady Cellars Wine Club
Kim Brady is a friend and fellow West Seattleite, who started his first commercial release in 2010. I'm all for supporting friends and small wineries, and Brady makes it easy by producing excellent wine at an affordable price point. His club commitment is a minimum of 6 bottles a year. Members get 10% off retail price, and the release parties are a blast, not to mention often a stone's throw away from our house. Tyler Palagi of Radiator Whiskey is always whipping up delicious food pairings with Brady's wines.

West Seattle Wine Cellars Specialty Club

I have been a member of the Specialty Club offered by the West Seattle Wine Cellars for several years. It features a red and a white from literally anywhere in the world at a cap of $90 plus tax. But don't worry, Tom DiStefano, who carefully selects each bottle, has never let us down. You may get some interesting selections from Slovenia and South Africa as well as the classics from Barolo, Burgundy, and Rhone. I always recommend this club to anyone who is looking to expand his or her palate.

Quilceda Creek Release Party

Quilceda Creek Private Member List
Last but not least, the exclusive Quilceda Creek Private Member List. Quilceda Creek produces world-class Washington Cabernet Sauvignon and has a few 100-pointers from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate to its name. There is a wait to get onto the member list. It took me less than a year. Once on the list, you get to purchase three of the four wines initially: the Columbia Valley Red (or CVR, which is an excellent deal!), the Galitzine Vineyard, and the Pelanget Vineyard. After another year or so, I was finally invited to the release party and got to purchase the flagship wine. It is a game of patience, but it is definitely worth the while if you are very particular about your wine. All the wines are divine (particularly the flagship), and the membership price is unbeatable.

My Verdict: Depending on your taste and budget, there is likely a wine club or member list that works for you. Unless you have generous cellar space and/or bank accounts, you may need to break up with some club and list memberships that no longer work for you. You can always share wine club or list memberships with friends. It needs some coordination, but it can also be a win-win proposition.