Glass Of Wine
It’s time to help drinkers make informed and responsible choices, says top wine critic
Wine in pubs – the 250 ml glass is an unexploded bomb
It’s your round. You ask your buddies what they want to drink. Jim, a 15 stone bloke, wants a pint of bitter. Sheila, an 8 stone girl, wants a glass of Chardonnay.
So you order at the bar. ‘Large or small?’ asks the barman when you ask for the glass of wine. Small seems stingy, so you opt for the large.
Now a large glass of wine in a pub is 250 ml. It doesn’t look all that big, but this is one-third of a standard bottle. How many people realize this as they’re having a drink with their friends?
And Sheila, who is half the size of Jim, is about to drink a glass that contains 35 ml of pure alcohol (14% of 250 ml), whereas Jim’s pint has 21.5 ml of alcohol (3.8% of 568 ml). It’s clear that Sheila’s drink is going to have a lot more of an effect on her than Jim’s.
Bear in mind, also, that one unit of alcohol is just 10 ml. So Sheila’s large glass of wine represents 3.5 units.
If she has two glasses, by UK definitions she is officially binge drinking (defined as six units in a session for women and eight units for men), and she will have surpassed the drink drive limit by some margin (the single glass may well have already done this).
That large glass of wine is the liquid equivalent of an unexploded bomb. It should come with a health warning.
After all, how many people would just assume they could drive home after drinking a single glass of wine? And it’s not as if 14% is a particularly high level of alcohol these days.
New world reds commonly top 14.5% alcohol, and some push things even further.
I think pubs and restaurants who serve wine by the glass should be doing something about this. It’s just irresponsible to be serving people drinks with that much alcohol in them without some sort of guidance or warning.
In an environment where rounds of drinks are the norm, anyone opting for wine is likely to be consuming a good deal more alcohol than those who are on beer or long drinks (a gin and tonic will have 25 ml of 40% alcohol, which is 10 ml of alcohol, a single unit).
At least with beer, the alcohol level is clearly displayed on the font, so customers can make an informed decision. Have you ever seen this with wine? Have you ever been offered a lighter alternative? Me neither.
But not only will the wine drinker be getting quietly pissed, they’ll also run the risk of getting fat. A 250 ml glass of wine at 14.5% alcohol and with no residual sugar contains 207 Calories.
Now if this was a typical lighter-style wine in the same serving, at 8% with 8 g/litre residual sugar, this would be 124 Calories. As a comparison, a Big Mac is 540 Calories, and a Mars Bar is 280 Calories.
Clearly, this isn’t as serious an issue as people unintentionally getting quietly drunk and then getting in their cars, but it’s a consideration.
It’s time for drinkers to be given the information that helps them to make informed choices.
By Jamie Goode for www.wineoption.org