'Wine Bottle Sizes'
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As well as the traditional (in many cases, legally required) 750ml bottle (the standard size to be found on supermarket and wine merchants shelves), and the useful half-bottle (containing 375ml of wine), there are a number of legally permitted 'large format' bottles. Many of these are named after biblical kings.
Most confusingly, however, the same name may be used to refer to different size bottles in different regions of France. Here are the large format bottlings commonly referred to.
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Bottle
equivalent |
Bordeaux Wine
Bottle Sizes |
Burgundy
Bottle Sizes |
| Two (1.5L) |
Magnum |
Magnum |
| Three (2.25L) |
Marie-Jeanne |
- |
| Four (3.0L) |
Double magnum |
Jéroboam |
| Six (4.5L) |
Jéroboam |
Rehoboam |
| Eight (6.0L) |
Impériale or Rehoboam |
Methusaleh |
| Twelve (9.0L) |
- |
Salmanazar |
| Sixteen (12.0L) |
- |
Balthazar |
| Twenty (15.0L) |
- |
Nebuchadnezzar |
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Other regions of France, Europe, and the New World also bottle some wine in large formats, particularly magnums. For larger bottlings, most tend to follow the Burgundy terminology, and consequently some Jéroboams (four bottles) may be found. The Bordeaux terminology seems quite restricted to that region alone. Large format bottles are popular with Bordeaux collectors, particularly the eight-bottle Impériale.
This is because the small amount of air in the bottle (between the cork and the wine) and a large amount of wine results in a small air:wine ratio and this would seem to favour slow development of the wine when compared with smaller formats.
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