Which Wine Has The Most Sugar
It may seem obvious, but its worth repeating, dessert wine is very high in sugar. For example, a nice snifter of Port has 100 grams of residual sugar. Port and other dessert wines should be avoided by anyone trying to limit their sugar intake.
While Port being high in sugar may not come as much of a surprise , sometimes a wines sugar level does not match its sweetness. All wine contains naturally occurring acids. These acids help to balance the sweetness of the wine, meaning the sugars are not often detectable on the palate. In fact, even the most practiced wine tasters would struggle to tell you how much residual sugar is in a glass on a blind test.
So what this means is wines that dont taste sweet in the slightest can still be considered high-sugar wines. For instance, certain bottles of Australian Shiraz, a generally dry wine, have over 12 grams of sugar per glass.
Cheaper, mass-produced wines are known to be higher in residual sugars. These cheaper wineries often utilize tricks such as adding artificial acids to help balance overly sweet wines, or adding in artificial sugars to add balance to overly sour grapes.
If you are wanting to lower your sugar intake, opt for wines made in small, high-quality wineries that dont intervene with the natural process of the grapes. Make sure they focus on traditional winemaking techniques.
How To Select Low
One of the great things about wine is that each winemaker produces wine a little differently. However, this means that theres no perfect rule for selecting low-sugar wines. That said, there are a few things you can keep in mind that will make the decision process easier.
Here are a few things to consider when selecting wine:
- Dry white wines are the best option for low sugar wines
- Wines from France, Italy, and Greece are usually dryer than wines from other regions
- Cheap, mass-produced wines often mean added sugar and other additives
- Look for winemakers focused on traditional winemaking techniques
- Look for wines described as: dry, extra dry, bone dry or brut
- Avoid wines described as: dessert, late harvest, ice wine, dolce, demi sec, or semi sec
While each winemaker is different, there are some wines that are generally lower in sugar, with around 1-3 grams of sugar per 5-ounce serving. Red wines that fall into this category are:
- Cabernet Sauvignon
Is Sugar Added To Wine
As has been established, sugar is integral to the wine-making, alcohol-producing process. Chaptalization is a term that refers to the process of adding sugar to grape juice during fermentation. Interestingly, this process is illegal in select winemaking regions and the addition of sugar during the fermentation process is indicative of a low-quality winemaker.
You might be initially inclined to believe that this is done with the intention of making the wine sweeter and thus it would not fall into the category of low sugar wines. This is, however, not necessarily the case. Chaptalization is an effective way of increasing the overall alcohol content of the wine as it permits a prolonged fermentation period.
A second dose of sugar may be added after the initial fermentation when the yeast is removed so as to facilitate the secondary fermentation of bottle-fermented sparkling wines.
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These Wines Have The Least Amount Of Sugar
If youre dieting or trying to monitor your sugar intake for health reasons, you may think you have to forgo the occasional glass of vino because of the sugar in wine. Think again! Not all wines are loaded to the brim with sweeteners that will wreak havoc on your system. In fact, there are many varietals that contain little sugar, allowing you to maintain your dietary goals.
The trick is, knowing which ones to sip and which ones to skip.
Tesco Low Alcohol Cabernet Tempranillo

Tesco Low Alcohol Cabernet Tempranillo
Calories: 37 per glass | ABV: 5% | Price: £2.75 per 75cl bottle
Delivering the punch of flavour of a rich full Spanish red, but none of the alcohol. Enjoy it with one of our favourite low calorie meals like squash risotto or stuffed peppers.
Vidiano Natural wine
Calories: 84 per glass | ABV: 12.5% | Price: £25.50 per bottle
This sensational biodynamic wine is produced on the Corelli Wine Domaine Paterianakis on the island of Crete. Its organic and doesnt have any sulphates added. Sulphates are often the cause of hangovers so this could be a hangover-free wine? I guess its worth a shot!
In fact, its one of the best we tasted, this wine has a complex flavour. We picked up aromas of apple and honey, but it also has a refreshing finish. It would pair well with chicken and fish. Despite being having only 84 calories in a glass it certainly doesnt compromise on flavour.
Oddbird Sparkling Rose
Calories: 19 per glass | ABV: 0% | Price: £9.99 per bottle
Another lovely French rosé, but this time with the alcohol removed so everyone can enjoy it. Oddbird Sparkling Rosé is described as having Sophisticated tones of Granny Smith apple, Citrus and Summer berries. With a very fresh taste of berry with a touch of sweetness there are hints of strawberries, red currants and citrus.
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Crumsa Terres Rares Sauvignon Blanc
This crisp, elegant Sauvignon comes from the rolling hills of the Cotes du Tarn in south west France, and contains zero sugar and just 89 calories per 125ml glass. This vegan friendly wine undergoes a cool fermentation and some lees ageing in the cellar creating lovely fresh, juicy white wines. We recommend trying it with pesto pasta or fish and chips. You can find it on the DrinkWell website for £10.99 per bottle.
Which Wines Have The Least Amount Of Sugar
When searing for a low sugar wine, the safest choice is always to opt for an excellent dry wine. With a sweetness level of less than one percent, the sugar content of these wines is minimal and will therefore not counter your carbohydrate-cutting endeavours. For some perspective, a semi-sweet wine will have a sugar content of roughly three percent.
Dry reds such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Shiraz as well as dry whites like Viognier, Pinot Grigio, and Chardonnay have very low residual sugar contents. If you are looking for low sugar wines of the sparkling variety, Brut contains roughly 2 grams of sugar per 5 ounces.
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How To Choose A Low
Diet or no diet, sometimes you just need a glass of vinoand low-sugar, low-carb wine options make it a bit healthier to imbibe.
Doctors say moderate alcohol consumption can increase your HDL cholesterol, and studies have shown that people who consume several drinks a week actually live longer. However, most drinks are also full of empty calories, especially when combined with the excess food intake hello, bar nachos! that you might inhale and blame on, ahem, your lowered inhibition.
Here’s the good news: If you know what to look for, you can find a good low-carb wine and enjoy that blissed-out feeling a glass can bring after a looong day. In fact, wine actually falls on the low end of the alcohol spectrum when it comes to comes to carbs, with around 5 grams of carbs per glass .
What Is The Healthiest Wine To Drink
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Why Does Wine Have Sugar In The First Place
Heres the thing about wine: Though you need sugar to make it, that sugar doesn’t make up much of the final product.
When a grape is ripe enough for harvesting, its juice should come in at between 21 and 25 brix , explains Brian Azimov, wine expert and founder of Wine With Brian.
Through fermentation, which occurs when yeast is added to grape juice, that sugar starts to turn into alcohol, Azimov says.
Stop the fermentation process early and youll have wine with higher amounts of sugar and less alcohol. Ferment for longer, and you’ll have a wine with lower sugar content and more alcohol.
In climates that don’t support proper grape maturity, some winemakersespecially in France, which tends to be cooler than, say, Californiarely on chaptalization. In this process, winemakers add cane or beet sugar to the unfermented grapes, Azimov explains.
Dont stress, though: This sugar merely initiates the fermenting process. Just like the sugar in the grapes themselves, it gets turned into alcohol during fermentation.
Though winemakers ultimately decide how sweet to make any variety of wine, different types of wine generally contain different amounts of sugar, says Azimov.
How To Order Keto Cocktails And Drinks At The Bar
For me, the best drink to order at the bar is a vodka, club soda with fresh lime. If they dont have fresh limes, do not opt for their lime juice. Simply drink the vodka and soda. This is the safest route. A lot of bars and coffee shops will offer sugar-free syrups, but you cant always trust they are using the appropriate one. To stay safe, I stay clear of those while out at bars.
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How Much Sugar Is Actually In Wine
In order to determine how much sugar is in your wine, look to sweetness. People often mistake fruitiness for sweetness, but these two tasting characteristics are very different. Even though you might smell fruity aromas, the wine would still be dry based on its residual sugar content.
Lets get one thing established without sugar, there is no wine. Seriously. Grapes contain naturally occurring sugars which are consumed by yeast and converted to alcohol during the fermentation process. Fermentation is complete once the desired sugar level is reached which, for many wines, is when they get to fully dry at 0° Brix. But you may have heard the term residual sugar. This is any leftover sugar that remains post fermentation and is measured in grams per liter. So if you consider that most dry wines have very few grams of RS per the entire liter then it might be a shocker to see other beverages and foods reaching 25 grams or more per serving!
For sweeter dessert wines, winemakers stop the fermentation process earlier, leaving more residual sugar that the yeast hasnt yet converted to alcohol. This leaves a sweeter style wine with lower alcohol content.
On the flip side, dry wines ferment much longer, leaving little residual sugar and higher alcohol content.
A dry wine typically has less than 10 grams of residual sugar per liter often 3 grams or under. A sweet or dessert wine has more than 30 grams per liter. Most wines in between would be characterized as off-dry.
What If I Cant Find A Tech Sheet

If you cant find or if the residual sugar is not listed, here are a few tips:
Got a nice, dry favorite you can recommend for all those eager wine lovers who need a low-sugar but tasty option? Jump into the comments and let us know what it is!
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Which Wines Have The Least Carbs And Sugar
If youre trying to cut down on the amount of sugar you consume, the good news is that you can still enjoy a glass of wine – you just have to know what to look out for.
If youre doing the keto diet, you shouldnt be having more than 50g of carbs a day – and a standard glass of red wine contains between 2 and 5 carbs or 85 calories.
However, drinking a bottle is a different story and should be avoided, as it can cost you upwards of 15 carbs.
A small glass of wine every so often isnt too bad for you – but its all about moderation and knowing what wines contain the least amount of carbs and sugar.
There are plenty of low carb and low sugar wine options out there, so keep reading to learn what to look out for.
How To Measure Sugar
In the chart above youll see sugar measured as grams per liter sugar or . Residual Sugar is usually displayed in 1 of three ways: in grams/Liter, in grams/100ml, or as a percentage. For example, 10 grams per liter of residual sugar is equal to 1 percent sweetness.
Wines range from 0 to 220 grams per liter sugar , depending on the style. In case you didnt know, dry-tasting wines contain up to 10 grams of sugar per bottle.
- Bone-Dry< 1 sugar calories per glass
- Dry 0-6 sugar calories per glass
- Off-Dry 621 sugar calories per glass
- Sweet 2172 sugar calories per glass
- Very Sweet 72130 sugar calories per glass
The terms above are unofficial but do show common ranges. Currently, most countries arent required to label actual sweetness levels in wine.
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Which Type Of Wine Has The Lowest Amount Of Sugar
Wine sugar content will vary quite heavily depending on the bottle you purchase and the type of wine you buy.
However, it is accurate to say that white wine has the most amount of sugar, while red wine has the least amount. This lower level has a lot to do with how the wine is manufactured and fermented. The longer a bottle of wine ferments, the less sugar it contains.
Thats because the yeast that produces alcohol eats sugar and leaves behind the alcohol content you find in a wine bottle. Sweeter wines typically have less alcohol because they have not fermented as long and produce less overall alcohol.
As a result, you can get around four to 220 grams of sugar per liter in a single bottle of wine, with red wine having the least amount. It is also worth noting that red wines can also be quite healthy in moderation.
Typically, you get around 0.9 grams of sugar in a 175-milliliter glass of red wine. That amount is much lower than you get from many sweeter white wines.
However, some red wines may contain a higher amount of sugar if theyve been fermented for a shorter amount of time. For instance, a good rosé can have between 35 and 120 grams of sugar per glass, while dessert wine has seven grams.
By contrast, a dry white wine can have around 1.4 grams per 175-milliliter glass.
Again, that will vary depending on the white wines overall sweetness and dryness. Generally speaking, though, red wines that ferment the same time as a white will normally have less sugar.
Best Low Calorie Rose Wines
- Diamarine Provence: Everybody loves a good rose, and this delightful bottle is sure to set your tastebuds whirling. It is a gentle but flavoursome wine, ideal for mild spring afternoons and pleasant summer evenings. It has a complex aroma, making it almost as fun to sniff as it is to drink. Almost.
- SLIM Wine Rose 500: Another hit from SLIM Wine, this wine is everything you could want in a rose. It is refreshing, fruity, dry, and delicious. Like SLIM Wines other products, it is completely free of sugar and carbs.
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The Best Low Calorie Wine You Can Enjoy On A Diet
Enjoy our fantastic selection of low calorie wine. We have included our favourite red, white, rosé, and prosecco low cal options.
Calories in wine come in two guises. Those in the alcohol: each gram of alcohol contains seven calories. And those in the sugar thats either a leftover from the fermentation process or in the case of some wines, such as champagne, added after to give the wine a sweeter flavour.
Some wines are very calorific, so even just a few glasses soon add up. One standard-sized glass of wine typically contains about 130 calories. The NHS website points out that drinking four bottles of wine a month adds up to a yearly consumption of around 27,000kcal, which is equivalent to eating 48 Big Macs per year.
Establishing the calories that are in a glass can be tricky as this information is not often easy to find out. Unlike food, wine doesnt always have nutritional information displayed on the packaging. So like our low calorie beer collection, we have rounded up some of the best low calorie wine available to buy online
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Which Wine Has The Least Sugar
Not surprisingly, sugar is the demon for all dieters. And for good reason. Sugar’s empty calories wreak havoc on insulin levels, may aggravate health issues, and can play a part in sleepless nights, let alone aid in the accumulation of extra pounds. So when a wine lover decides to monitor sugar intake, it’s only natural to want to figure out which wines contain the least amount of residual sugar.
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