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Red wine

A 150 ml serving of red wine carries about 15.4 g of pure ethanol — 1.9 UK units, 1.1 US standard drinks, 1.3 Estonian/Finnish units — and roughly 123 kcal.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

Wine13.0% (12.0-15.0%)USDA basis: Red wine

Red wine averages a little stronger than white — commonly 13 to 14.5% for warm-climate styles — so the same glass carries a little more ethanol. Otherwise the arithmetic is identical: a dry red has very little residual sugar, so essentially all of its energy comes from the alcohol.

Red wine also carries more folklore than anything else on this page, most of it descended from observational studies that reported lower cardiovascular event rates among moderate drinkers. Those studies are real, and their interpretation has been argued about for thirty years, largely because people who drink moderately differ from people who do not in many ways other than drinking — including, importantly, that lifelong abstainer groups often contain people who stopped drinking because they became unwell. Later work using genetic methods, which are less vulnerable to that particular confounding, has generally not supported a protective effect.

The practical position this page takes is simple: whatever the cardiovascular argument settles on, the arithmetic below does not change. A 175 ml glass of 14% red is a specific quantity of ethanol and a specific number of calories, and that is what this page can tell you. Whether any amount is right for you depends on your health, your medicines and your history, and that is a conversation with a doctor.

By serving size

What the strength range does

Where the calories come from

The carbohydrate figure below is the USDA FoodData Central row for Red wine — 2.6 g of carbohydrate (of which 0.6 g sugars) per 100 g — applied to 150 ml of this serving. USDA values are per 100 grams and this page applies them per 100 millilitres. Beer, wine and cider are close enough to the density of water for that to cost a per cent or two; spirits are lighter, so for them the approximation is worth about five per cent.

As a cross-check, the same USDA row reports 85 kcal per 100 g, which scales to about 128 kcal for this serving against the 123 kcal computed above — a gap of about 3%. Two independent routes to the same figure will not land on the same digit: the reference row was measured on one specific product at one specific strength, this page uses the strength you would find on a typical label, and the per-100-g to per-100-ml conversion costs a little more. Where the gap is large, the strength assumption is almost always the reason.

Source: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy (public domain) — row: Red wine · checked 2026-09-02

What it costs in walking

This is an energy comparison and nothing more. Walking does not undo a drink: the ethanol still has to be metabolised, it is still prioritised over other fuels while it is in the system, and the effect it has on sleep that night is not cancelled by exercise the following morning. The number is here because it makes an abstract quantity concrete, not because it is a plan.

See brisk walking for where the MET value comes from, or the whole exercise library for other movements.

Source: 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.) — MET value for brisk walking · checked 2026-09-02

How many reach a weekly guideline

The 112 g line is the UK Chief Medical Officers' 14 units a week, quoted here because it is the guideline most often referenced in English. It is not the only one and it is not necessarily the one that applies to you: national low-risk guidance differs between countries, is written in different unit sizes, and has been revised downward in several places in recent years. Look up the guideline where you live and convert it with the table above.

Source: UK Chief Medical Officers' low risk drinking guidelines — named example only · checked 2026-09-02

Clearance estimate

Read those hours as the earliest plausible figure under a set of assumptions that will not all hold for you. Absorption is treated as instantaneous, so the model starts the clock too early. Elimination is treated as a fixed 0.15 ‰ an hour, when published individual rates run from roughly 0.10 to 0.20 — at the slow end, the last column takes a third longer than it says. And the whole calculation is for one dose taken at one moment, not for three drinks spread across an evening, which is the situation that actually produces a morning-after problem.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

The thing people get wrong

The health halo. The calories and the ethanol are the same as any other drink of the same strength.

Frequently asked questions

Other drinks

All drinks and the calculator · Exercise library · Daily calorie needs · Sleep calculator