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?