Wine contains very little sodium. A standard 5-ounce glass of white table wine has about 5 milligrams, which is negligible compared to the 2,300 mg daily limit most health guidelines recommend. For context, a single slice of bread typically contains 100 to 200 mg of sodium, making wine one of the lowest-sodium beverages you can drink.
How Much Sodium Is in a Glass of Wine
According to the USDA National Nutrient Database, white table wine contains roughly 1 mg of sodium per fluid ounce. That works out to about 5 mg in a standard 5-ounce pour. Red wines fall in a similar range, generally between 5 and 10 mg per serving. Dessert wines, which are sweeter and sometimes more concentrated, can land slightly higher but still remain well under 20 mg per glass.
Non-alcoholic wines are comparable. The Norwegian Food Composition Database lists dealcoholized wine at about 3 mg of sodium per 100 grams, which translates to roughly 4 to 5 mg in a typical serving. Removing the alcohol doesn’t meaningfully change the sodium content.
How Wine Compares to Other Drinks
Wine sits near the bottom of the sodium scale among common beverages. Cola contains roughly 5 to 6.5 milliequivalents of sodium per liter, while beer comes in at about 2.2 and orange juice at 3.7. Sports drinks are the outliers, ranging from 8 to 33 milliequivalents per liter depending on the brand. Plain water and coffee contain the least, at 1 or below. Wine falls comfortably in the low-sodium category alongside coffee, water, and light beer.
Where the Sodium Comes From
The small amount of sodium in wine comes from two main sources: the grapes themselves and certain winemaking additives.
Grapes absorb minerals from the soil and irrigation water as they grow. In regions like California’s Central Coast, groundwater used for irrigation can carry elevated sodium levels. Research from the University of California found that vineyards in that area contend with high exchangeable sodium in their soils, driven by sodium-rich groundwater. Grapes grown in these conditions may pick up slightly more sodium than those from areas with lower-mineral water sources, though the differences in the finished wine are small enough that most people would never notice.
On the production side, many winemakers use sodium metabisulfite as a preservative to prevent oxidation and microbial spoilage. Typical dosing ranges from about 40 to 80 mg per gallon at crush, with additional smaller doses during aging and before bottling. While this compound does contain sodium, the amounts that end up in each glass are minimal. Some winemakers specifically choose potassium metabisulfite instead, precisely because it avoids adding any sodium at all.
Why Wine Labels Don’t List Sodium
If you’ve looked at a wine bottle hoping to find a nutrition panel, you probably came up empty. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which regulates wine labeling in the United States, does not require nutrient content labeling on alcohol beverages. Winemakers can voluntarily include calorie and macronutrient information, but most don’t. When they do, the rules require listing calories, carbohydrates, protein, and fat per serving. Sodium isn’t specifically called out, and given how little wine contains, it rarely appears even on voluntary labels.
Does Wine Sodium Matter for Blood Pressure
For most people, the sodium in wine is so low it’s irrelevant to daily intake. Even if you drank three glasses in an evening, you’d consume about 15 mg of sodium, less than 1% of a typical daily limit. If you’re on a strict low-sodium diet for heart failure or kidney disease, wine’s sodium content is not the concern.
That said, alcohol itself does interact with blood pressure independently of sodium. A cross-sectional study of older adults in northern China found that excessive alcohol intake combined with high dietary sodium was associated with a greater burden of hypertension than either factor alone. The takeaway isn’t that wine’s sodium content is dangerous. It’s that the alcohol in wine matters more for blood pressure management than the trace sodium does. For people managing hypertension, the amount you drink matters far more than the milligrams of sodium in each glass.