What bottle sizes are there for wine?

Directive 2007/45/EC sets out which nominal quantities prepackaged products may have in the European Union, and wine appears there with its own lists. The directive was adopted on 5 September 2007, published on 21 September 2007 and entered into force on 11 October 2007.

For still wine eight sizes are permitted: 100, 187, 250, 375, 500, 750, 1000 and 1500 millilitres. Sparkling wine has five: 125, 200, 375, 750 and 1500 ml. Liqueur wine and flavoured wine have their own series of seven sizes. For spirits a list of nine applies, including the familiar 700 ml and 1750 ml. Vin jaune from the Jura has its own size of 620 ml, the clavelin.

Above the magnum of 1.5 litres, bottles get names that mostly come from the Bible, and the name depends on the type of wine. According to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, 3 litres is called a double magnum, 4.5 litres a jeroboam for still wine and a rehoboam for sparkling wine.

Above that the series continues: 6 litres is called imperiale for still wine and methuselah for sparkling wine, 9 litres salmanazar, 12 litres balthazar, 15 litres nebuchadnezzar and 18 litres solomon. On the small side are 18.7 cl, the piccolo or split, and 37.5 cl, the half bottle. Note that for sparkling wine a jeroboam in practice often refers to the 3-litre bottle.

A larger bottle has less surface area per litre of wine, while about as much air enters through the cork as with a regular bottle. Per litre, the wine in a magnum therefore comes into contact with less oxygen than in a 75 cl bottle.

Slower oxidation means slower development, so aromas and flavours change more gradually. In addition, 1.5 litres has a greater thermal mass than 0.75 litres, so fluctuations in the ambient temperature have less impact. Smaller bottles, on the other hand, are assumed to speed up maturation. A difference in bottle size, incidentally, says nothing about the quality of the wine itself.

The 750 ml bottle dominates the market: Wine Australia measures a share of 91 percent of volume in the United Kingdom and 58 percent in the United States in 2023. Of the small sizes, 187 ml is the best-selling.

Large packaging does grow. The 5-litre cassette format grows by 13 percent a year according to that same overview and is popular in Australia and Canada. Alternative packaging such as cans, PET and kegs remains small at 0.2 percent of export volume, and flexible packaging accounts for another 1 percent. By comparison: glass is the largest item in the emissions of the Australian wine sector, accounting for 34.4 percent of a total of 1,770,997 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2020 and 2021.

A magnum of 1.5 litres equals two bottles of 75 cl and, according to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, yields ten to twelve glasses. A standard bottle thus comes to five to six glasses.

For a table of six, a 750 ml bottle is therefore tight and a magnum is more than enough for a first round. A half bottle of 375 ml gives two to three glasses, a piccolo of 187 ml about one and a half. With large formats it adds up quickly: a salmanazar of 9 litres equals twelve regular bottles.