Illustrated from left to right, front to rear: split, bottle, magnum, double magnum, nebuchadnezzar and jeroboam.
Submitted Photo
As a home winemaker, I am always searching for bottles. What most people throw away, I collect. In the process, I have come across many different sizes, colors and shapes of bottles.
When I was growing up in California, my mother would keep a gallon jug of wine under the sink. She would periodically get it refilled from the local winery, or wherever it was convenient or inexpensive. As a single mother during the Depression, she always looked for the most inexpensive way to do things, which is not to say she didn’t like “the good life.”
During the holidays the gallon jug would come out and each of us kids would get a small glass of wine. She would pour a small amount into each of our glasses and then add water. Even though it was always accessible from under the sink, she knew the level in the gallon jug, so no one would dare sneak some when she wasn’t at home.
Once she took me to the local winery where she got a “refill,” and I was amazed at the different sizes and shapes of wine bottles. I asked her, “Why don’t we get one of these?”, pointing to a bottle on display. “No,” she replied, “the wine we are getting is much better, and besides, it costs much less.” Up until that visit I thought wine came only in gallon jugs.
As a young man in the service, I was able to travel throughout the world. In my travels, I would inquire about different wines, their origin and the different bottle styles and shapes. In France I learned that a standard bottle of wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy would contain the same amount of wine, but the main difference was the bottles’ shape.
The conclusion I have come to is that there is no “universal” standard, but there is some commonality—mainly represented by tradition, the region where the wine was made and what the winemaker thought was best. Sparkling wines follow the size and shape standard used in the Champagne appellation in France. A jeroboam of Champagne is four liters, but a jeroboam of still wine is four-and-a-half liters.
I am still on the hunt for bottles, even if they are leftovers from a particular run at a local winery. I guess I have inherited some of my mother’s frugality. Occasionally I will hit upon a “gold mine” of bottles and will share them with our other home winemakers.
The chart of bottle sizes below may be helpful and could prompt an interesting discussion during your next visit to a local winery.
Jack Bertram is a Sonoma resident and brings a unique perspective to home winemaking. He is the president of the Valley of the Moon Dilettante Enological Society (www.vomdes.org).
