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Monday, 22 May 2023

Does size matter?

Globally, we have determined a standard wine bottle size to be 750ml. I find that universal agreement fascinating, but it may be due - my uneducated guess - to France having led the world in wine production, and having created the metric system. The rest of us followed what was a pretty sensible standard.

This is great: just for a change it means it doesn't matter if we buy a Chilean wine, a Californian wine, a Croatian wine or a Chateau Capbern-Gasqueton; the bottle and the pour will be the same. We do not have to try and remember how to convert US fluid ounces into 'proper' fluid ounces, and then do the 26ml conversion to get to actual millilitres. We know that each bottle of will yield five standard drinks (or seven standard drinks if we are pouring bubbly). Lovely.

Except that there are LOTS of different sizes of bottles. Most of us will be familiar with the 'standard' 750ml, and the magnum (two bottles at 1.5l), but many of us will not have seen the glass giants, or the split sizes. It can be quite difficult to find information on what sizes are considered 'standard' in these less usual bottles. As Alexis Bespaloff says:

"Certain wines, most often Champagne and [those from] Bordeaux, are sometimes marketed in oversize bottles, the best known of which are the magnum (equal to two standard bottles)". But then there are the "double magnum (four bottles), Jeroboam (four bottles in Champagne, six in Bordeaux), Imperial or Methusalem (eight bottles), Salmanazar (twelve bottles), Balthazar (sixteen bottles), and Nebuchadnezzar (twenty bottles)" (1988, p. 78).

I was recently reading a book which talked about a 'jeanne', but I could not remember what size that was. Digging through my books on wine yielded little, so I had to turn to the internet. However, I found so much conflicting information, I decided to create a list of my own summarising the main 'agreed' sizes. I found the size of a 'jeanne' - a Marie Jeanne, or Tregnum - three bottles. Phew: that's 15 standard drinks!

What is also fascinating is that when we get past the Marie Jeanne size, we get into the Hebrew names: Jeroboam (the founder of Israel); Rehoboam (an Israeli king); Methuselah (long-lived king at 969 years); Salmanazar (a Babylonian king); Balthazar (one of the three magi); Nebuchadnezzar (a Babylonian king); Melchior (another of the three magi); and Melchizedec (an old testament king/priest) (Dominé, 2004). And a 'note to self': as these are all named after people, they need to be capitalised.

Hmm. But this made me wonder why only two of the three magi had bottle sizes named after them? What happened to Caspar (aka Gaspar)? Perhaps he was not considered sexy enough for the French naming schema. Or perhaps there was something else already named that...

Anyway. The bottles are (Bespaloff, 1988, p. 78; Difford, 2023; Dominé, 2004, p. 138; Ideal Wine, 2020), in volume order:

  • Piccolo, (aka quart avion) - 187.5ml
  • Demi (or 'half-bottle'; not a 'sexy' name!) - 375ml (1/2 x 750ml)
  • Standard bottle - 750ml
  • Magnum - 1.5 litres (from now on shown as "l"; 2 x 750ml bottles)
  • Marie Jeanne (aka Tregnum) - 2.25l (3 x 750ml)
  • Jeroboam (aka double Magnum) - 3l (4 x 750ml)
  • Rehoboam - 4.5l (6 x 750ml)
  • Bordeaux Jeroboam - 5 litres (6.67 x 750ml)
  • Methuselah (aka Impérial) - 6l (8 x 750ml)
  • Salmanazar (aka Mordechai) - 9l (12 x 750ml)
  • Balthazar - 12l (16 x 750ml)
  • Nebuchadnezzar - 15l (20 x 750ml)
  • Melchior (aka Salomon, Solomon) - 18l (24 x 750ml)
  • Sovereign - 26.25l (35 x 750ml)
  • Primat (aka Goliath) - 27l (36 x 750ml)
  • Melchizedec (aka Melchizedek, Melchisedech, Midas) - 30l (40 x 750ml)

The array of sizes is fascinating. And we never know what it is that we need to know until we stumble across it.

And just imagine how many standard drinks that adds up to!


Sam

References:

Bespaloff, A. (1988). The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine. William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Difford, S. (2023). Bottle Sizes – the world's mandatory bottle sizes. Difford's Guide. https://www.diffordsguide.com/encyclopedia/235/bws/bottle-sizes-the-worlds-mandatory-bottle-sizes

Dominé, A. (2004). Wine (revised and updated ed.). Tandem Verlag GmbH.

Ideal Wine. (21 December 2020). Methuselahs, nebuchadnezzars … what’s in a (bottle) name?. https://www.idealwine.info/methuselahs-nebuchadnezzars-whats-in-a-bottle-name/

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