The nutrition declaration became mandatory on EU wine on 8 December 2023. The good news, and the part many producers still don’t realise: you are not required to send every cuvée to a laboratory. Values may be established by calculation from generally established and accepted data.
For wine that calculation is short. Almost all the energy in a bottle comes from two things — ethanol and residual sugar.
The conversion factors
These come from Annex XIV of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, the food information regulation:
| Component | kJ per g | kcal per g |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (ethanol) | 29 | 7 |
| Carbohydrate (sugars) | 17 | 4 |
| Organic acids | 13 | 3 |
| Polyols | 10 | 2.4 |
Fat and protein in wine are negligible, so in practice you are working with the first two rows — and, if you want to be thorough, the third.
Step 1: turn alcohol by volume into grams
The label gives alcohol as % vol, but the energy factor is per gram. The bridge is the density of ethanol, 0.78924 g/ml at 20 °C.
ethanol (g per 100 ml) = alcohol (% vol) × 0.78924
A wine at 13.5% vol:
13.5 × 0.78924 = 10.65 g of ethanol per 100 ml
Step 2: add residual sugar
Residual sugar is usually recorded in g/L, and the declaration is per 100 ml, so divide by ten.
2 g/L ÷ 10 = 0.2 g of sugar per 100 ml
Step 3: multiply out
Alcohol: 10.65 g × 29 kJ = 308.9 kJ 10.65 × 7 = 74.6 kcal
Sugar: 0.20 g × 17 kJ = 3.4 kJ 0.20 × 4 = 0.8 kcal
───────── ──────────
Total 312.3 kJ 75.4 kcal
Rounded: 312 kJ / 75 kcal per 100 ml.
That is the entire calculation. A dry white at 12.5% vol with 1 g/L lands near 288 kJ / 70 kcal; an off-dry riesling at 11% vol with 20 g/L is around 288 kJ / 69 kcal — the sugar adding roughly what the lower alcohol takes away.
Step 4: fill in the rest of the table
The mandatory declaration lists seven items, in this fixed order, per 100 ml:
| Per 100 ml | |
|---|---|
| Energy | 312 kJ / 75 kcal |
| Fat | 0 g |
| of which saturates | 0 g |
| Carbohydrate | 0.2 g |
| of which sugars | 0.2 g |
| Protein | 0 g |
| Salt | 0 g |
For most wines, fat, saturates and protein are genuinely zero and salt is negligible. Carbohydrate for a dry wine is essentially the residual sugar.
On rounding, follow the Commission’s tolerance guidance: energy to the nearest
whole kJ and kcal; nutrients below 0.5 g may be declared as 0 g.
Where the table is allowed to live
This is the split that trips people up:
- The energy value must be on the physical label. It may appear in the short form — the symbol “E” followed by the value.
- The rest of the table may be off-label, reached electronically by a QR code or symbol on the bottle.
So the printed label can carry nothing more than E 312 kJ / 75 kcal while the
full seven-line table lives on the e-label, alongside the ingredients list. That
is what makes the digital route worth it: you keep the physical label design
intact.
The full requirements for that digital page — no marketing, no tracking, direct access, right language — are covered in our guide to EU wine label rules.
A caution on precision
Calculated values still have to be accurate. They are subject to the same tolerances as analysed ones, and the declared figure is the one an inspector compares a sample against. Two practical consequences:
- Use the real numbers for the batch, not the target spec. A wine that finished at 14.1% vol should not be declared from a 13.5% plan.
- Recalculate per vintage. Alcohol and residual sugar move year to year; the nutrition table moves with them.
This is the tedious part — the same three numbers re-entered across a label proof, a tech sheet, an e-label page and four translations. Drinksbase derives the table from the alcohol and sugar figures on the wine record, so it updates everywhere at once when the vintage changes.
General guidance, not legal advice. The binding texts are Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 and Regulation (EU) 2021/2117. Confirm your figures and formats with your competent authority before printing.
