Size... Does it matter?

Saturday, April 1, 2023

When it comes to wine, size really does matter and so does shape. Of course we are talking about the vessel containing it, which has traditionally been made of glass. It’s all so interesting.

The first glass wine bottles appeared in Britain some time around 1636, in the post Roman era. It was not legal to sell wine pre-bottled though, due to the diversity in (hand blown) bottle size, or volume... so to deal with this issue, wine was sold by measure and then put into the buyers’ own bottles, then sealed. This process went on for hundreds of years until the advent of bottles with hand written labels appeared in the late 1800’s.

"Magnums are the perfect sized bottle of wine for a dinner party Wendy Valaster - Sommelier ISG

Bottle shapes and sizes continued to vary. The early onion shaped bottles often had the capacity of ‘a lung-full of air’, but they could be made to hold up to 30 bottles of wine. In time, with the EU and other bodies enforcing it, sizes began to become standardised. Shape though, continues to vary even until today. One of the things you can be certain of, is that wine bottles will have some degree of a punt at the bottom of the bottle, from a shallow concave, to one that is dramatically indented. This simple design factor aids in creating a very strong bottle. Sommeliers love a good punt for a stylistic pour, but most importantly it keeps bottles from breaking during transport.

Aging capacity also increases in larger format bottles as there is less wine surface in contact with the ullage, or the air space in the bottle, so over time the wine will age slower, and very likely, more gracefully. In BC, and especially at the BC Wine Information Centre, we are lucky to find many large format bottles of wine. Typically BC wineries will bottle their flagship wine in magnum sizes (1.5L or 2 bottles worth of wine), and we can find some great value here. This size is perfect for dinner parties, family gatherings and of course, for cellaring! I'm a sucker for them, and my cellar boasts a wide array of BC's best! Now and then you just might be able to seek out the odd, impressive Jeroboam, and very rarely we find, someone will bottle a Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar or a whopping 20 bottle Nebuchadneszzar... the search is on! Enjoy!

 By Wendy Vallaster