Sugar Rush

Earlier this week I popped up on ITV’s This Morning to talk about sugar in wine with the divine Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. The good news is that in the grand scheme of things, wine isn’t too bad as far as sugar goes. Most are fermented dry with yeasts converting the natural sugars found in grapes into alcohol. Anything that’s left is measured as residual sugar, or RS in wine speak. We’re talking a pinch per glass for most wines, half a teaspoon for sparkling. To put that into context, there’s around six teaspoons of sugar in a glass of orange juice. Of course, some of the sweet rosé or blush wines have more but a pale Provence rosé? A pinch, if that. Annoyingly though, alcohol is almost twice as calorific as sugar. But think bone dry with sensible alcohol levels and you’ll avoid the sugar rush.