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The party season is over, the decorations are down, the credit card bills are
landing on the doormat and your waistband is stretched to bursting. It must be
January and it’s time to tighten your belt in every sense. Today on the Moncrieff
show on News Talk 106-108 at about 3.15pm, we look at ‘diet wines’
and bargain priced wines in the January sales if funds are low.
Many of us will want to loose
a few pounds and detox after the inevitable excess intake over Christmas (myself
no exception) and may be wondering about low or no alcohol wines and how many
calories there are in wine and other drinks.
Alcohol is the key to
calories in wine, more so even than any residual sugar except in very sweet
wines as a gram of alcohol has seven calories and a gram of sugar has four
calories. Low or no alcohol wines have the alcohol removed but that screws up
the taste and feel of the wine in the mouth so sugar is added to compensate. The
result for wine lovers is a pretty nasty cocktail in my experience so we won’t
be tasting one today!
The best thing to do is to
try a naturally low alcohol wine. We’ll be tasting a Weight
Watchers Fruity White, which has only 9.5% alcohol by volume (%
a.b.v.) that costs just €6.45 in Tesco. It’s from Germany and many of that
country’s wines have lower levels of alcohol. Many a Mosel wine may only have
8.5% a.b.v. as the grapes struggle to ripen in such a cool climate. Even in
warmer areas like the Pfalz they are rarely above 12.5% a.b.v.
So how any calories in a
glass of wine? This link
will take you to a page that tells you how to calculate it exactly but in
general for a 125ml glass (ie 6 glasses to a bottle) expect these amounts for
various alcohol levels:
8 % = 55
10% = 70
12% = 85
14% = 100
Residual sweetness (RS) in a
wine adds a few calories too, e.g. 2 g/l RS
(common even in dry wines) adds one calorie so a medium sweet wine with ten
times that adds another ten calories per glass.
In comparison a measure of
spirits (35ml in Ireland) at 40% has about 77 calories, but watch that mixer,
while a pint of draft Guinness has about 245 calories, as far as I can tell from
scanning the web.
For carb counters following
the Atkins diet, wine has very low levels of less than 2g per glass. Most
spirits are negligible too, while Guinness has about 16g per pint as far as I
can tell, but different sources quote different amounts.
Committed beer drinkers
should check out www.drinkbeergetthindiet.com!,
a site I found researching this piece.
As I type my gas bill and credit card bill have just arrived! They are frankly
shocking and yours probably are too, so now is the time to hit the sales if you
want bargain wines. Marks and Spencer has a large number of wines at 25% off at
the moment and are particularly worth checking out. Quality is pretty reliable
across the board with their wines, more so than most and with this kind of
discount there are serious bargains to be had. We’ll be trying two Italians at
giveaway prices. First is a Bianco Benevantano
at a staggering €4.39. A very acceptable drink at its non-discounted price at
about 45.75, as it is made from two of Southern Italy’s finest varieties, the
fiano and falanghina in Campania and only 11.5% a.b.v. The red Puglia
Rosso on offer at €5.19 (down from €7.49) is made from primitivo
(a.k.a. zinfandel) and negroamaro. It has 12.5% a.b.v. for calorie counters but
tastes richer and gutsier than that.
Dunnes stores still has most
of its Christmas offers running until the end of January, so there are some
deals there to be had. More well heeled readers could check out the sales at Berry
Brothers or winesdirect.ie.
Readers wondering about cheapies at Lidl should know I tried a couple of sub
€5 reds from Lidl and they will be used in the cooking pot not my glass and
cannot be recommended.
M. Moran MW, 12/1/07
www.winerepublic.com
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