The Whiskey Shots With The Highest And Lowest Amount Of Calories

Keeping an eye on your calorie intake is a daunting task and, as far as weight loss goes, the science behind its effectiveness is ambiguous at best. But even if counting calories isn't the Holy Grail of weight loss that it once used to be, it's still a good idea to be conscious of what we're putting in our bodies. Plenty of people prefer drinking whiskey over beer because whiskey doesn't have all of beer's nutritional baggage. Whiskey has no carbohydrates, no fat, and essentially no sugar — beer can't say the same. But whiskey is still quite calorie-dense, though nothing compared to beer or even wine.

A typical whiskey at 86 proof will have 105 calories in a 1.5-ounce pour (the size of your shot may vary, but 1.5 ounces is fairly standard). Because the calories come directly from the alcohol, the number of calories you're taking in is directly correlated with the alcohol content of the whiskey. Which is to say that a 120 proof whiskey will have more calories than an 80 proof whiskey. 

So, it's no surprise that the whiskeys with the lowest calorie count are low-proof whiskeys. The whiskeys with the least amount of calories per shot will be Crown Royal Special Reserve at 96 calories, Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 at 97 calories, and Glenfiddich 12 Single Malt Scotch at 100 calories. The award for highest calorie count goes to Bruichladdich X4 Quadrupled Whiskey, which is the highest proof whiskey ever sold at 184 proof.

Bruichladdich is an outlier, but 120 proof whiskeys aren't uncommon. With a 120 proof whiskey like Cragganmore Scotch, you can expect 147 calories in a 1.5-ounce shot. You may have noticed that we didn't share the actual calorie count of the Bruichladdich and that's because there isn't one publicly available. If you're trying to get your calorie numbers accurate down to a single digit, you are going to struggle a bit if you step outside of the most popular whiskey section. 

Whiskey bottles don't have a nutrition label on them the way a can of soup does, so you'll be relying on the companies releasing that information or other online resources. Whiskey is essentially just ethanol and water with a very small percentage of chemical compounds responsible for flavor mixed in. If precision isn't as important to you, just remember that the higher the proof the more calories there are since the ethanol is what's providing the calories. 

Whiskey can't go lower than 80 proof, but there does seem to be some variation among the 80 proof whiskeys, as evidenced by the fact that Crown Royal and Glenfiddich 12 are both 80 proof but have a 4-calorie difference between them. That will probably be true of higher-proof whiskeys as well, so keep that in mind, but if you're going for the least calories possible, simply opt for an 80 proof option and you should be fine.