Is a glass of wine a night too much?
On this page
It depends on the glass. A 5 oz glass of 12% wine every night is 7 US drinks a week, one under NIAAA’s heavy drinking line for women. A 6 oz pour of 13.5% wine makes it about 9.5 a week, over the line.
A glass of wine with dinner has a reputation as the healthy way to drink. For years people heard it was good for the heart. The newest US Dietary Guidelines give no number and say to drink less, and a 2022 study of 371,463 people found light drinkers also led healthier lives, and taking that into account shrank the apparent heart benefit (see is red wine good for your heart).
What we’d do
Use a smaller glass, have it with dinner, and keep a few nights a week dry. A 5 oz glass at 7pm with dinner is mostly cleared before an 11pm bedtime for most people, so it costs your night very little. Don’t drink it for your health, because the studies that look carefully find no benefit.
The pour decides it
A glass of wine at home is whatever fits in the glass, the way a bowl of cereal is whatever fits in the bowl.
| A glass a night | US drinks a week | Women’s line: 8 | Men’s line: 15 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 oz, 12% | 7 | under | under |
| 6 oz, 13.5% | 9.5 | over | under |
| 8 oz, 12% | 11.2 | over | under |
| 9 oz, 13.5% | 14.2 | over | just under |
A US standard drink is 5 oz of 12% wine, according to NIAAA. NIAAA counts 8 or more drinks a week as heavy drinking for women and 15 or more for men.
What it does to your night
Very little, if it’s early. On our engine, a 150 lb woman’s 5 oz glass at 7pm with dinner is mostly cleared about 10:00pm. A 6 oz restaurant pour at 7pm is gone by about 10:40pm. Move the same glass to 10:30pm and it’s still in her blood until about 2:30am.
What it does over the years
For women, the long-run cost is mostly breast cancer. NIAAA says even one drink a day can raise a woman’s breast cancer risk by 5% to 15%. The Surgeon General’s advisory, as reported by NCI, put it in people: among 100 women who have less than one drink a week, about 17 will develop an alcohol-related cancer, and among 100 who have one a day, 19.
The heart and lifespan benefit doesn’t hold up when it’s checked carefully. A 2023 analysis of 107 studies found that 86 of them had put former or occasional drinkers in with the non-drinkers. Comparing drinkers with people who had never drunk, it found no lower risk of dying for people who drank up to about 24 g a day, which covers a glass a night up to about 8 oz of 12% wine.
Who should skip the glass
The 2025-2030 US Dietary Guidelines say pregnant women, people recovering from alcohol use disorder or who can’t control how much they drink, and people on medicines that interact with alcohol should avoid it completely. The Your week tool counts your own glasses by the pour.
7 sources
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Drinking Levels and Patterns, updated January 2026niaaa.nih.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, What Is A Standard Drink? Updated December 2025niaaa.nih.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Women and Alcohol, updated December 2025niaaa.nih.gov
- National Cancer Institute, Alcohol and Cancer Risk, reviewed May 2, 2025cancer.gov
- Zhao J and others, Association between daily alcohol intake and risk of all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analyses, JAMA Network Open, 2023pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- US Department of Health and Human Services and US Department of Agriculture, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030, Limit Alcoholic Beveragescdn.realfood.gov
- Biddinger KJ and others, Association of habitual alcohol intake with risk of cardiovascular disease, JAMA Network Open, 2022pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
