White Wine

Food · Drink · Food, Typed Supps

Red wine’s polyphenol story doesn’t apply here. The alcohol does.

Stage by stage

Acid (Enamel): Wine is acidic enough to erode enamel, white more than red on average.
Absorption (Stomach & small intestine): Ethanol is absorbed rapidly, faster on an empty stomach.
Metabolism (Liver): Roughly one standard drink per hour, via alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde.
Sleep (Brain): Shortens time to fall asleep, then fragments the back half of the night.

Timing

With food, absorption slows and the peak is lower. Within three hours of bed, the sleep cost is reliable and larger than most people expect.

Time to effect

30–90 min: Peak blood alcohol.
Second half of night: REM rebound and fragmented sleep.

Allergens

Contains: Sulphites. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Pescatarian, Keto, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Vegan, Vegetarian, Kosher, Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

Not scored: the satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings, and nobody eats a 240 kcal serving of this. The question does not apply rather than the answer being unknown.

Environmental footprint

1.8 kg CO2e and 108 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Wine" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Pricey — roughly £12 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Alcohol

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 71
Protein: 0.2g
Carbohydrate: 0.1g
of which sugars: 0.1g
Sodium: 2mg

Food vs. supplement

Resveratrol supplements exist because the wine story was appealing. The doses used in trials are hundreds of times what a glass provides, and the trials themselves have been largely unpersuasive — which makes wine a poor delivery vehicle for a compound that may not do much anyway.

Kitchen tip

Measure a 100 mL pour once, into your usual glass, and note where it comes to. Most people are pouring nearly two standard drinks without knowing it.

Common myth

“Wine is good for your heart.” In reality: That claim came from observational studies where moderate drinkers were compared against a group of abstainers that included people who had stopped because they were unwell. Mendelian randomisation studies, which are far less vulnerable to that bias, find no protective effect. Meanwhile alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen with a breast cancer association at low intakes. White wine additionally has almost none of the polyphenols the story rested on.