Keto Vino: The Low-Sugar Wines That Still Feel Luxurious
Brut Nature represents a super low RS pour. Pictured is Pares Balta’s Brut Nature Historic Cava.
There’s a certain irony in sipping Champagne after a Pilates class and calling it ‘balance’. But as wellness culture and wine culture increasingly overlap, the question of ‘what’s actually in your glass’ has become harder to ignore. Especially if you’re someone who’s tried to reconcile a low-card or keto lifestyle with a love of a good pour.
For me, this intersection of pleasure and discipline isn’t new. At 21, long before I started Fizz In The City, or my career in wine, I ran The Keto Bakery Co. - a business dedicated to creating low-sugar, high-flavour bakes that felt indulgent without compromise. It taught me how misunderstood sugar is: not just in food, but in everything from mixers to the glass of wine in your hand. The parallels between pastry precision and winemaking are striking – both about balance, chemistry, and restraint.
So, what makes a wine ‘keto-friendly’? And can a glass of bubbles (or still – I'm not biased I promise) fit within the macro-counting mindset? The short answer: yes – if you know what to look for. The long answer (you knew it was coming) is all about residual sugar, fermentation, and a little marketing myth-busting.
First, the science: Where carbs in wine really come from.
Wine doesn’t contain carbs in the bread-and-pasta sense. What it does contain – or not, in some cases – is residual sugar (referred to as RS), the natural grape sugar left unfermented after yeast has done its work.
Dry wines: <3g/L Residual sugar
Off-dry: 4-12g/L Residual sugar
Medium-sweet: 12-45g/L Residual sugar
Sweet/Dessert: 45g/L+ Residual sugar
For context, a well-made Chablis or Brut Nature Champagne has roughly 0.5g of sugar per glass – less than half a strawberry.
Meanwhile, mass-market roses and semi-sparkling wines can contain 20-60g/L or sugar – we’re in liquid cake territory here. The sweetening, or dosage, added to many cheaper sparkling wines is there to hide poor fruit quality or balance searing acidity. Don’t get me wrong – it's a vital tool when it comes to balancing all sparkling wines, but it shouldn’t be championed for masking poor quality juice.
Net carbs: The Keto-friendly benchmark
If you’re tracking macros or managing blood sugar, what really matters are net carbs – the grams of digestible carbohydrate (almost entirely sugar) per serving. Using residual sugar data, we can estimate that:
Brut Nature/Zero Dosage Sparkling: 0-3g/L RS = 0-0.45g Net Carbs per 150ml Glass
Extra Brut Sparkling: 0-6g/L RS = 0-0.9g Net Carbs per 150ml Glass
Dry Still White/Red: 1-6g/L RS = 0.15-0.9g Net Carbs per 150ml Glass
Off-Dry/Semi-Sweet Still Wine: 10-20g/L RS = 1.5-3g Net Carbs per 150ml Glass
Sweet or Dessert Wine: 20g/L RS + = 3g+ Net Carbs per 150ml Glass
So... that Brut Nature Champagne? You’re looking at less than one gram of net carbs per glass. Practically negligible.
Fizz In The City favourites: Keto-friendly bottles worth sipping:
Raventos i Blanc ‘de Nit’ Brut Nature Rose Cava, Spain
A pale pink Catalan fizz made without dosage, proving that Mediterranean sparkling doesn’t have to mean sweetness. Bone-dry, saline, whisper-light – ideal with seafood.
Chablis (any top producer: William Fevre, Louis Michel), Burgundy, France
Unoaked Chardonnay with taut acidity and texture. Typically <1g/L RS, translating to barely 0.15g net carbs per glass. Super chic, super keto.
Sancerre (Jean-Max Roger is great) or Pouilly-Fume, Loire, France
Crisp, green apple, wet stone – RS is often around 1g/L. Pairs effortlessly with a green asparagus number – especially is there’s some hollandaise floating around...
Spätburgunder, Germany
Light, red-fruited and super dry, offering freshness without sugar. If you prefer something more local, we have amazing options from the UK – such as Gusbourne’s English Pinot Noir.
Provencal Rose, France
Mirabeau Pure and Whispering Angel both sit at under 1g/L RS from their 2024 Vintage tech sheets – so perfectly gluggable, even if following the keto crowd.
FINAL FIZZ
If you’re following keto, or just watching your sugar intake, wine doesn’t have to be off the table. Forget the faddish low-sugar or even now the calorie call-out bottles (those are lower in alcohol and, as such, typically higher residual sugar) - wines that are fermented to dryness, not masked by dosage and balanced through purity, not complexity.
Having built The Keto Bakery Co, I learned that indulgence and discipline can absolutely co-exist – it’s about precision, not deprivation. Who has ever stuck to the rules when you’re abstaining from the things that bring you joy!
Drink less but better. As I pour a glass of Pares Balta Brut Nature Cava, I feel like that’s balance done right.