This review presents evidence which implicates a role for menstrual cycle phase in the response of pre-menopausal women to moderate alcohol intake. It is concluded that the majority of published studies have suffered from poor methodological design and have employed inadequate means of cycle phase identification. Contradictory and ill-founded findings have been reported. The best evidence to date suggests that women eliminate alcohol more rapidly during the mid-luteal phase of the cycle. This finding needs to be substantiated by further studies.