Part I · Foundations · 2 min
Wine among the drinks
How strong wine is next to beer and spirits, and why counting glasses doesn’t work.
People compare drinks by the glass, which is the wrong unit, because the glasses are different sizes and the liquids are different strengths. The only comparison that works is by how much pure alcohol is in front of you.
| Range | Where most of it sits | |
|---|---|---|
| Ciders and beers | 1-15% | Almost all at 4-6% |
| Wine | 7-24% | Table wine 11-15%; fortified climbs past 20% |
| Spirits | 37.5-95% | 37.5% is the EU floor, and the US sets 40% for many categories |
Note how much of that range wine covers on its own. A light German Riesling at 8% and a Vintage Port at 20% are both wine, and one is two and a half times the other. Treating "a glass of wine" as a fixed quantity is the single most common mistake people make about their own drinking.
The unit, and why it exists
A standard unit exists to make different drinks comparable. The volumes below all land within about a gram of each other, at close to 10 grams of pure alcohol, which is why they count as one standard drink each.
- 250 ml of 5% beer
- 100 ml of 12% wine
- 30 ml of 40% whisky
- 30 ml of 45% pastis
- 250 ml of 5% cider
The catch is that 100 ml is a small pour. A generous restaurant glass of red is often 175 ml or more, which at 14% is closer to two units than one. If you’re counting, count millilitres and percentages, not glasses.
How much is that, really?
Set a pour and see what it actually amounts to.
That is 19.3 g of pure alcohol.
| Counted in | One drink is | This pour is |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand / Australia | 10 g | 1.9 drinks |
| France | 10 g | 1.9 drinks |
| United Kingdom | 8 g | 2.4 drinks |
| United States | 14 g | 1.4 drinks |
The same pour is a different number of drinks in each row. Nothing about the wine changes - only who is counting.