Wine Bottle Size Trivia

Brian, one of our owners here at Balabans, hosted a party this weekend and cracked open a special bottle from his cellar.

It was a 6 Liter bottle of 1986 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon. He said the wine was "excellent", which was no surprise to me.

Me. I was driving to Chicago with my wife. As I'm telling her about this wine, she asks: "so how many bottles are there in 6 Liters"?

I responded "8". And then thought, wait, maybe it's 10. Or, is it 12?

Dang. I wasn't sure. I hadn't thought about this in a while. 

So, after we got home, I revisited wine bottle sizes.

Incidentally, my initial response was correct. 6 Liters = 8 regular bottles of wine.

Here are some other bottle sizes. These sizes are for still wines. Bottle sizing is a little different for sparkling and Champagne wines.

187.5 ml - Piccolo or Split - Typically used for single servings of Champagne.

375 ml - Demi or Half - Holds one half of the standard 750 ml size.

750 ml - Standard - Most common wine bottle size.

1.5 L - Magnum - Equivalent to 2 standard 750 ml bottles.

3.0 L - Double Magnum - Equivalent to 2 Magnums or 4 standard  bottles

4.5 L - Jeroboam - Equivalent to 6 standard bottles 

6.0 L - Imperial - Equivalent to 8 standard bottles or 2 Double Magnums

9.0 L - Salmanazar - Equivalent to 12 standard bottles - a full case of wine!

12.0 L - Balthazar - Equivalent to 16 standard bottles.

15.0 L - Nebuchadnezzar - Equivalent to 20 standard bottles.

18.0 L - Melchior (not pictured) - Equivalent to 24 standard bottles - 2 cases of wine!

Tom

Now those are some BIG bottles!