If you love the odd glass of wine, you will know that it isn’t as easy as deciding to have a glass, opening a bottle and drinking a glass right there and then. You’ve probably heard the idea of letting wine ‘breathe’ – that is, letting air get to it once you have opened the bottle. But why should you do this, and how can a wine aerator help you? Once you know the answer you will know why you need a wine aerator to get the best out of your wines.

While there are some white wines that can be allowed to breathe to improve the taste before drinking, the idea of letting wine breathe really relates to red wines. A lot depends on the age of the wine too – the younger it is the more advantageous it will be to let it breathe before you dive in and drink some.

Okay so how long do I have to wait before I can start enjoying the wine?

Well it all depends, but most people would agree that about fifteen to twenty minutes is a good time frame. This means you have to be prepared in advance though, and if you are cooking a nice steak for dinner you might well forget to uncork your red wine in time to drink it at its best once you serve dinner.

This is the problem most people have with aerating wine. It is also the reason why you need a wine aerator because the job then becomes a lot easier to manage. Timing is everything when you want to drink a glass of wine, and as most wine experts will tell you, every wine will taste a little better once it has had time to connect with the air. The air releases more of the flavor of the wine so a little patience is definitely a good thing here! If you can uncork it and wait a while for it to improve, you will be rewarded with a better taste and flavor.

How can I let my wine aerate fully in the shortest possible time?

The worst thing you can do is to simply uncork the bottle and leave it at that. You can pour it into the glass and let it sit for a while, but the best way to proceed is to use a wine aerator. This is a simple device that has been designed to let air into the wine as you pour it. Basically it means that you can open your bottle of red wine, pour it out and drink it virtually straightaway.

You just have to hold the wine aerator over the glass and use it as a kind of funnel. You pour the wine into it; it aerates it and then sends it into the glass. It is a simple but effective tool that no red wine drinking house should be without. So now you know why you need a wine aerator – and once you have one you’ll be glad you got it.

Most people enjoy a drop of alcohol from time to time, and wine is undoubtedly one of our favorites! But if you have ever tried dieting to lose some weight you’ll know that plenty of diets frown on the idea of having any wine anywhere near your diet regime. It’s simply not generally recommended.

But if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re feeling a bit dejected that you can’t drink while you are dieting, start thinking the European way. You see, Europeans tend to keep on drinking whenever they are on a diet. They just tackle things in a different way. Instead of drinking all kinds of different things they switch to red wine – and only red wine.

So why is red wine great for people who are dieting?

You’ve probably read some things about the benefits of red wine and they’re pretty much all true. Red wine has antioxidants in it that are good for our bodies in that they help keep us healthy. Wine is also pretty low in calories, and if you opt for a glass of dry red wine you’ll be able to enjoy it with a guilt free conscience.

There’s obviously a limit to what you can drink though, am I right?

Yes that is right. Obviously wine of all descriptions (indeed alcohol of all descriptions) has calories in it. This means the more you drink, the more calories you’ll ingest.

So make it just the one glass of dry red wine a day, get the health benefits from it like the Europeans do, and leave it at that. It’s a guilt free pleasure that forms a healthy part of your daily diet.

The one thing you need to remember is that wine doesn’t keep forever once it’s been uncorked. Even if you have a glass of red wine every day it will take you a few days to go through the whole bottle. So you need to have some way of preserving the rest of the bottle until you are ready to drink it.

What can I buy to do just that?

Vacuum sealers are perfect. These look a little like oversized corks and you pop one over the top of the bottle and it will seal the whole thing up for you. This means you don’t get any air in your partially drunk wine bottle and your wine will stay preserved at the best possible state. You can get manual sealers and also ones that work on batteries, although these are a little more expensive.

It will also benefit you to buy a wine aerator. This won’t prolong your wine but once you are ready for another glass from your vacuum sealed bottle, just pour it through the aerator to instantly and easily get some air into your red wine.

Both of these items will make your wine last longer and also ensure it tastes just as good as can be. And that’s exactly what you want from your wine each and every day.

You know, some people have this idea that wine is wine. Of course red is red and white is white, but other than that they have no real idea of the depth and breadth of tastes and aromas that are in play here.

I’m going to make sure you’re not among the group of people who make that mistake. I have a belief that if you’re going to drink a glass of wine, it should be a good one. After all, why should you settle for a mediocre taste when you can enjoy a great taste instead?

Hang on though – does this mean I have to go out and buy expensive bottles of wine?

No you don’t – and that’s the secret I am going to share with you here! You see, it’s not only the bottle of wine you choose to drink that matters. It’s also the way you drink it. I’m not talking about drinking from a bottle instead of a glass of course – no, there is a neat trick you can use that really enhances every single wine you’ll ever drink in the future.

Here it is. We’re talking about aerating a single glass of wine. You may have heard of aeration before but you might not know exactly what it’s all about. So let’s explore the process first.

Is it complicated?

Not at all, and let me assure you that you don’t need any expensive or complicated equipment to do it with. If you’re going to drink a single glass of wine, all you have to do is uncork the bottle and pour some into your glass.

It’s a good idea to leave a gap of a few inches in between the mouth of the bottle and the top of the glass as you do this. Aerating your wine basically means getting some air into it, and by pouring it in this way you will enable more air to get into it.

Now we all love having a taste of the wine immediately it’s poured, but leave it for a few minutes for the aeration process to really get going. Then you will see just how effective it can be to have a little patience!

The idea is that aeration releases some of the aromas that have been corked up in that bottle. Air actually enhances a wine once it has been made and bottled, so by letting the air do its work you can enjoy an even better wine.

Can it really make a wine taste a lot different?

Yes it can. Try it with a bottle of inexpensive Californian red and see what effect you get. You might be surprised to learn it can actually take on a more European taste simply by giving it that extra bit of time to breathe and aerate once it leaves the bottle.

Try it and enjoy it! If you’re only going to have a single glass of wine, it’s good to ensure it tastes as good as it possibly can.

There’s nothing like the taste of a good wine… unless you’re on a diet that is. How many diets have you been on that allow you to enjoy that very same taste on a regular basis? Could you lose weight with a wine diet?

I’m guessing the answer is ‘not many’ or more probably, ‘none at all’. But in reality there is no such thing as a banned item of food or drink on a diet. Sure, some diets might restrict you in certain ways and many of them say you can’t drink while you are dieting. Have you ever heard people referring to alcohol and wine as having ‘empty calories’? Sure you have – we all have. The idea is that you’re drinking something with calories in it, when you could be enjoying some food with the same number of calories instead.

So what’s this idea about a wine diet then?

Well the idea is that wine is just a small part of the diet of course! You shouldn’t focus on this and nothing else. But in truth wine actually isn’t quite as laden with calories as some people would have you think.

Sure, some people can take it or leave it and in this case they might find it worthwhile to stop drinking wine while they are trying to lose weight. But in reality wine can be beneficial when you drink it in moderation – especially if you’re drinking red wine. This type of wine is known for having antioxidants in it, so you’ll certainly benefit from those. They help us fight disease in many ways and as such we stand a chance of a healthier life if we drink a small amount of red wine on a regular basis. Don’t like red wine? No worries – white wine has these antioxidants as well, albeit in smaller amounts. So perhaps you can lose weight with a wine diet after all?

Is it a case of everything in moderation?

Yes it can be – obviously if you drink a lot of wine on a daily basis it isn’t good for your health. But if you were to have a glass of wine every day you would benefit from the associated health benefits of it, without having too many so called ‘empty calories’.

Let’s think about these empty calories in another way. You might be surprised to learn that the average glass of dry red wine has just over eighty calories (that’s for about 115ml). Obviously if you have sweet wine there’s going to be more calories in it. Dry white wine has even fewer calories, with around seventy seven calories in the same volume of wine.

So you see it is definitely the case that a small amount of wine every day – say one small glass – won’t put a dent in your diet if you don’t overindulge elsewhere. In fact being able to enjoy your wine instead of depriving yourself of it and making yourself feel miserable could actually be the best thing you could possibly do.

So… fancy a glass of wine tonight with that low calorie dinner? Go for it – you can if you lose weight with a wine diet.

Are you thinking about dieting? Maybe it’s that time of year when you normally think about trying to shed a few pounds. Whatever the reason might be for wanting to lose some excess weight, you’ll probably be resigning yourself to the idea of giving up drinking wine for the duration of your efforts. But hang on a minute – before you do that, have you found about the calories in wine so you can see whether you actually have to cut it out altogether or not?

If you haven’t it may be worth continuing to read this article. You see, wine gets something of a bad press when it comes to dieting. You’d be amazed how many diets shun it completely, and yet when you actually consider how many (or how few) calories a small glass of wine actually has, you might want to carry on having a glass on a daily basis!

I thought wine was laden with calories?

Sure it has calories in it, but you might be surprised to find it doesn’t have as many as you might think. The calories in wine go up when you start talking about fortified wines, but when we’re focusing on just plain and simple red and white wines, you’ll find they have a lot less than many people expect.

Dry wines are the lightest ones of all in calories. A dry red wine has slightly more in calories than a dry white, but the difference is literally in single figures. You can enjoy a 115ml glass of red wine for just 83 or so calories, whereas white wine is around 77 calories for the same amount.

Of course you should expect sweet wines to be more calorific, but even then you would be amazed at how good they are in terms of calories. You’re still only talking about around a hundred calories for a 115ml glass of either red or white wine in this case, so even then you can enjoy it in moderation.

So does this mean I can include wine on any diet?

Well the best diet to follow is one that simply reduces the fat and calories in your diet to below the level you burn off each day. This will help you to lose weight. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a glass of wine as part of a balance diet – and in fact it could have benefits in several different ways.

For starters if you enjoy a glass of wine you will derive enjoyment from keeping just one small glass in your diet. If you deny yourself that pleasure you will soon find yourself craving wine because you can’t have it. It’s then that you are likely to drink more when you eventually find yourself giving in to your craving.

So think about the calories in wine and how they can affect your diet. You might find your diet is far easier to stick to if you can still have that treat every day.

Many people love a glass of wine every now and then. But if you are trying to lose weight the first thing you might want to cut out is alcohol. Hang on a moment though – don’t be so quick to cut out something you might actually enjoy! Instead, wouldn’t it be a good idea to figure out the calories in a bottle of wine, so you can decide how much you could actually drink without ruining your diet?

You bet it would, so here’s some advice to help you do just that. A standard bottle of wine normally contains 750ml. It is pretty easy to find out how many calories are in a glass of wine, and provided you know how big that glass is, you can work out the calories for the entire bottle.

Let’s say for instance you have a penchant for a dry red wine at 83 calories for a glass of 115ml. If you work this out for the whole bottle, it would contain around 540 calories. This means you can drink more or less than the 115ml if you want to. Say you wanted to treat yourself to a quarter bottle for instance – perhaps you’ve got some kind of celebration to enjoy. This would mean you’d have 135 calories in that quarter bottle. It’s as easy as that.

If we work out the calories in a bottle of wine for a dry white this time, we’d start off with roughly 77 calories in a 115ml glass. Here we would end up with around 500 calories for a whole bottle, since white wine is slightly less calorific than red if they are both dry.

Of course there are advised limits over which you shouldn’t go when it comes to drinking any kind of alcohol. But for the most part being able to figure out the calories in one bottle will help you to manage your alcohol intake, particularly if you are on a diet.

You’ve probably been on diets in the past that have expressly forbidden you to drink any alcohol at all. But there is a lot to be said for wine in moderation, and in fact it has been proven to hold various health benefits if you don’t overdo it. As you can see, having one glass of wine a day will not put a dent in your diet at all. It is low enough in calories to be worth having and enjoying, especially since it contains items such as antioxidants that are very good for you.

It’s the same story with sweet wine as well. A sweet red will have around 650 calories in the whole 750ml bottle, while the sweet white wine has 670 calories for the entire bottle. If you consider treating yourself to a small glass every day, you can see that those calories spread over an entire week would be quite easy to contain in your diet. The calories in a bottle of wine may not wreck your diet after all!

Here’s a question many people seem to ask whenever they are thinking of going on a diet. Does red wine fit in with the idea of a healthy diet in the first place?

Let’s take a look at what we know about staying healthy to begin with. For starters it is commonly understood that the best things we can do are to eat a balanced diet and get regular exercise in order to keep healthy. We can also add the target of maintaining a healthy weight. We all know that we should lose weight if we are carrying around too much all the time.

So where does red wine fit in to all this?

When you think of red wine, you probably think of alcohol above all else. But in fact there is a lot more to it than just a pleasant taste!

This kind of wine actually contains several things that have been thought to be good for our bodies. For starters it has antioxidants in it. These help to reduce our chances of getting all kinds of different diseases so it stands to reason that the more we can ingest, the better our chances are of staying healthy. There is also the point that many people in European countries (countries like France, where the residents tend to drink a lot of red wine in their diet) have lower incidences of the major killers such as heart disease than many other Western countries.

Great – sounds good. But is there anything else I should know about this type of wine?

The red stuff does have another ingredient in it that you may not have heard of before. This is known as resveratrol. It might sound like a strange name but in reality it seems to have a positive effect on the good type of cholesterol we carry in our bodies. It might also be able to reduce the chances of getting a blood clot and also to keep our arteries healthier for longer.

Studies are still going on to explore the health benefits of red wine. But in reality many people look to the Mediterranean diet to get clues as to how this wine helps people remain fit and healthy over the course of their lives. Most people will realize that it is not just red wine that does this – it is a combination of many different things. But the wine certainly seems to play a role too.

It should be remembered that just a small amount of the wine should be consumed as part of a healthy daily diet. A small glass is sufficient to get the benefits that come along with the wine, and if you were to drink too much you could end up consuming many more calories than you might think.

So if you are thinking about taking on a healthy diet and you were dreading the idea of giving up that glass of red wine, don’t worry. It might actually benefit you more if you carry on drinking it.

Picture it – you’re sitting down relaxing with a nice meal of, let’s say, lean steak and salad. It’s served with an eye to portion control of course, because you are trying to lose weight right now. So does this mean you have to forego the glass of red wine you’d normally have with it?

Well let’s think about it for a moment. Do you actually know how many calories are in that glass of wine? If you’re only having a small glass it might raise your eyebrows to realize it has only a little more than eighty calories if it’s a dry wine, and a hundred if it’s a sweet one.

That’s all very well, but can I really lose weight by drinking wine?

Wine Aerator

Let’s be honest here. Some diets will have you believe that wine is the enemy. You shouldn’t be drinking it and that’s that. But the best diet of all – one that actually works – is to eat what you enjoy in moderation. We all know that the best way to lose weight is to consume less than you expend in energy each day. This means that if you want to have a glass of wine you can, provided you don’t go over your calorie totals for the day.

This is great news when you think about it, because you’ve got more freedom to enjoy that glass of red wine you love so much! In fact you could stand a better chance of losing weight this way than you would if you were to deprive yourself of the wine altogether.

Is total deprivation a bad thing?

Yes it certainly can be, and a nice glass of wine is really no different in this respect. Let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose you are used to having and enjoying a drop of red wine maybe three nights a week with your dinner. Just the one glass, but you really enjoy it.

Now if your diet says you cannot drink any more, how much do you think you would miss it? For some people red wine is just as enjoyable as chocolate is to others. If you loved chocolate you would probably struggle to eliminate it completely from your diet. The same applies to red wine. If you allow yourself a little treat like this every day or two, you would be surprised at how much easier it can be to keep on track with your diet in the long run.

Of course red wine also has good health benefits. Just take a look at the diets of people in France to get an idea of how you can benefit in this sense. They eat well and live well, but they also have a regular consumption of wine that seems to help them health wise. So if a glass of red wine really does make you feel positive about the fact you’re dieting, then carry on drinking the occasional glass rather than depriving yourself.

Have you ever considered whether the calories in a glass of wine make it worth drinking or not? Lots of different diets would have you believe that a simple, enjoyable glass of wine is going to derail your diet for good! But in actual fact the only way you can derail your diet is to get several things wrong all at once.

The fact is that a glass of wine may not be as harmful for your diet as you might think. Most diets ban it completely. It’s also known for having empty calories. This basically means that you’re getting calories and very little else in terms of fat, carbs or protein. But that isn’t the end of the story – even though most diets like to have you believe it is!

So what’s the caloric value of a single glass?

Well let’s focus on a small glass here of around 115ml. Sweet wines will always be slightly more calorific than dry wines, because of their inherent sweetness. But once you see the difference between the two of them you might be surprised to learn there is less of a difference than you might think.

Let’s say you want a glass of red wine. If you go for a dry wine you’ll be taking in around 83 calories. But maybe you’re a sweet red wine kind of person? Okay, if that’s the case you should be thinking of around 100 calories instead. Not much of a difference is there?

So let’s move on to white wine. Are there fewer calories in a glass of wine in this situation? A glass of dry white wine (assuming around 115ml as stated before) actually has slightly fewer than 80 calories in it. Meanwhile you will be having more calories for a sweet white wine, but even then it will only get up to around 103 calories.

Fortified wines obviously have more, so if you stick to standard red or white wines you will be able to go by the calorific amounts given above.

So is wine actually a pretty good thing to have in your diet?

As with all things, provided you drink it in moderation there is no reason why you shouldn’t include it in your diet. It might actually help you to stick with it, since it is a very low calorie treat to allow each day!

The other good thing about drinking a small amount of wine is the health benefits it can give you. Antioxidants are just one of the things that can be found in wine, and these can help you stay healthy for longer and also fight disease. Sometimes there can be a good reason why certain foods or drinks are omitted from a diet plan. But as you can see with only a low volume of calories in a glass of wine and plenty of plus points health wise to look forward to, you might be better off including it rather than omitting it.

One question people often ask about wine concerns the volume of calories it has in it. Are there fewer calories in white wine than there are in red wine? One thing you normally hear is that wine – and indeed other forms of alcohol – contains ‘empty calories’. This basically means that it doesn’t have a lot of nutrients – the calories are just about the only thing in it, unlike various forms of foods you could think of.

Well there’s empty and then there’s empty! One thing that restrictive diets that don’t allow alcohol at all tend to forget is that many people enjoy a drink. So in a sense a glass of wine doesn’t have empty calories because it is a pleasurable experience and it also contains many good things such as antioxidants, which can help keep us healthier and free from disease.

So how do the calories match up between red and white wine?

Some people believe that white wine has fewer calories than its red counterpart, and they would be right. Let’s take dry wines to start with, since they are less calorific than the sweet ones for obvious reasons.

A small 115ml glass of dry red wine would set you back around 83 calories. Not bad, but as it turns out a small glass of dry white wine would be slightly less calorific. In this case you would consume around 77 calories for the same amount in white wine as red wine. But are there fewer calories in white wine that is sweet compared to a sweet red wine?

Actually you might be surprised to learn they are virtually the same. Just three calories separate the two of them in the same volume serving – 115ml – and this time the red wine comes out very marginally less calorific. Of course a lot of people prefer a drier wine these days, so if you focus on a dry white wine you can easily fit a glass of it into your diet on a daily basis.

Fortified wines will always be more calorific but if you stick to the traditional red or white wine you can see how beneficial it can be to allow yourself this little treat each day!

Wouldn’t you be better off going for alcohol free wine?

It would seem to be an option wouldn’t it? But many people are surprised to learn that alcohol free wine is not that much different from ‘real wine’. It weighs in at just under forty calories for a 115ml glass on the whole. Wouldn’t you rather enjoy a good glass of real wine for slightly more calories?

Needless to say, if you want to enjoy a proper drink but still consume as few calories as possible, white wine is the best option to go for, in a dry version. Are there fewer calories in white wine? Yes there are, but red wine isn’t too bad either so if you want to enjoy the taste of a good wine and still lose weight, it’s more than possible to do so.