So I’m in my second month of keto now, and I’m absolutely loving it! I fully intend to keep this as a permanent lifestyle change. Aside from the general health benefits, I’m so much more in tune with my body now, it’s just crazy. So I am a huge wine lover, and in fact I am in the process of opening a wine bar. I waited until about a month into keto when I really felt like I was fat adapted to have my first glass of wine after starting the diet. However I was really surprised to find that my usual favorite glass of wine tasted really sweet to me all of a sudden! Has anyone else had this experience? A week later (yesterday), I had another glass of wine and the same feeling. And we’re talking dry red wine here, like a Cabernet. Not only that, but both times, Immediately following the glass of wine, I became really irritable and easily aggravated. Coincidence? Or is there a rational link here? Did going Keto rid me of the feely goods I got from drinking my red wines??
Reacting Differently to Wine
Keto has made me hypersensitive to sweets. It’s funny when you eat a lot of sugar it takes more and more to taste it. But when you quit, it you begin to pick up the smallest amount of sweetness. 90% chocolate is a good example. I used to detest any dark chocolate and now I enjoy it!
Irony: You can have wine with Keto but you’ll have a hard time finding one that isn’t sweet.
I found exactly the same thing. I can only handle the driest if dry wines now or else it tastes like moscato. And I find the emotional/behaviour effects of alcohol are significantly more noticeable on keto…
Hmm - I haven’t had this particular experience with organic red wine - just a natural increase in my appreciation for the taste of the wine with food and my satiation with smaller amounts of wine - only one small goblet with a meal, rather than two. I drink the organic Trader Joe’s table red wine with appropriate cuisine, and it’s lovely.
However - I DID have a weird experience with non-organic Prosecco/champagne the first time I sipped it again on keto around month 6. It tasted much sweeter, and I had little gusto for drinking it with my meal - didn’t finish my glass even (first time ever for that, as I find bubbly very magical…), and didn’t have the usual second glass I would’ve had in previous days. It was strange, because the bubbly has always been a delightful treat in my ‘live a little’ attitude towards things as the French do.
Since then, haven’t had any desire for Prosecco or champagne, though red table wine is part of at least one dinner per week, often 2-3.
I’m sure keto also makes us more sensitive to the residues that may be in modern processed wines - the pesticides and sulfites along with varying sugar levels.
Also, the keto palate changes a lot - and - many people go through healing fatty liver in the first months of keto, during which time alcohol beyond a few sips is pretty contrary to what the liver needs. In eastern medicine, the liver is the emotional center of the body - and liver healing may certainly involve emotional clearing/evaporations. I think different phases of liver healing have may well have distinct reactions to alcohol in general - and that once liver issues are resolved, the benefits of red wine with proper cuisine may be more enjoyable.
If you search the forum on wine, there are various interesting posts from the past!
You think your wine tastes sweet… imagine what my Cadbury’s Creme Egg tastes like!! 
Yes everything tastes sweeter once your taste buds are not assaulted by sweet/carby things constantly. Dry red wine is a bit of an outlier but seems plausible.
I have also lost any semblance of alcohol tolerance. I’m like the great philosopher…
“John Stuart Mill,
of his own free will,
On a half pint of shandy,
Was particularly ill”
(Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Song)
No alcohol safe to drink, study confirms
I used to only really like certain whites. I always wanted to like reds and tried now and then but never really developed the palate for them. Since starting keto six months ago I have consistently found my ‘go-to’ Pinot Grigio too sweet (except one or two kinds), moved onto other whites which eventually started tasting very sweet and a few weeks ago I discovered I like red wine. I really like it and have had several different kinds since then and somehow just enjoy it. My sister is a sommelier and eats mass quantities of sugar. She thinks I’m nuts.
If you don’t already know about 'em, you might enjoy the little self-published low-carb (not really keto or high fat, but more fat is easily added…) book 'The Wine Drinker’s Diet" by Pete Bruckshaw, and also keto-scholar Cristi Vlad’s reporting on wine & longevity and SRIT1 in Periodic Fasting: Repair your DNA, Grow Younger, and Learn to Appreciate your Food.
I think there are some huge variables in different people’s physiologies and disease profiles - and that the insulin-resistant may need to forego all alcohol for a long time or always. It’s sad that the SAD has messed up metabolisms and created fatty livers in most adults, making it unwise to drink anything more than a half glass of wine until the fatty liver is healed (which can happen within the first month or two of keto in many). Additionally, anyone who’s been on meds for a long time or grew up taking ibuprofin, or who previously may have abused alcohol has an extra compromised/toxified liver.
Plus, modern wines are nothing like the basic, high-enzyme grape fermentations of the ancient mediterranean. I’ve had the opportunity to drink the elder scientist Stig Erlander’s artisanal home brewed organic wine in the distant past, and it was super heavy, and alive. It was oriented along the lines of the kind of enzymatically alive wine that the Christ sipped and made from water in that religious tradition, and that various mediterranean cultures and religions partook of. Sort of like thick dark kombucha. Hard to describe - and not gulpable - just sippable. The sort of wine that you savor your goblet of for an entire evening - no fast drinking of it possible! But it had an amazing, vitalizing quality. I think it must’ve been very high in natural sugars for the yeasts. Erlander was a PhD in molecular biology, and was quite a scholar on the topic, and wrote many papers and pamphlets.
@Kristin_Oman Erlander’s work was incorporated into this handy online article on Wine As Therapy which is cheery for a wine bar entrepreneur, I’d think! He points out that red wine stimulates the release of the hormone gastrin, which in turns stimulates the release of enzymes in the stomach, among them the enzyme called gastric alcohol and converts it into vinegar, or acetate (Frezza 127). Thus, wine stimulates the release of digestive enzymes, which digest not only the alcohol but the many other nutrients found in wine. (Whereas the high levels of alcohol in distilled alcoholic beverages cause a decrease and finally a deficiency in the release of digestive enzymes that contributes to malnutrition and, if not held in check, to alcoholism). Seems that certain reds are very keto friendly.
Interestingly, in the book “French Women Don’t Get Fat” by Mirielle Guiliano, former CEO of Chandon champagne company - talks about the common usage of bubbly for substantial brunch/lunch-as-first-meal-of-the-day, along with red wines for dinners - in a nation known for healthy hearts and non-obese older women. She points out that traditional French cuisine had small/modest amounts of artisanal bread, not the endless bread sticks/rolls/toast and breaded and pasta entrees of the typical American franchise restaurant.
I have had the same experience upon drinking white wines. And anything sweet too…
Some red wines now are much more easier to sink down. Whereas before they seemed a bit too tannin-ish.
I add fresh lemon juice to those electrolyte supplement powders, just to take the sweet edge off.
Previously I had the most awful addictive sweet tooth. I am only into my third month of Keto and I wish I had discovered this eating habit eight years ago…