Wine Notes from Mark: The Five Most Common Wine Bottles

Bentley’s Grill Wine Steward Mark Jacklich has begun his work on the Master Sommelier program this year. He plans to continue his studies with the Court of Master Sommeliers through 2012 and to spend a lot of time working with Jim Bernau’s team at Willamette Valley Vineyards to receive some training on the process from grapes to wine full circle. Mark is eager to share his knowledge with you in a new series of posts: Wine Notes with Mark. Enjoy!

Standing in a wine shop, or the wine section of a store can be overwhelming  for many reasons. So many choices, Pinot Noir or Cabernet? Sparking wine or Pinot Gris? Once you decided on what varietal you will be going with, the next question that arises could be – what size?

Many may not realize that there are a range of sizes to chose from. Everything from a single serving to satisfy the lone wolf, to one that can please the whole pack. There are over 20 different sizes of wine bottle . I’m going to highlight five of the more common bottles.

The Split
Also known as a “piccolo”(meaning ‘small’ in Italian) the split is essentially a quarter bottle, being 187.5 ml in volume. The split is most commonly known to be used for single serving of champagne or sparkling wine. In recent years single servings of other varietals have popped up for sale in convenient stores.

The Half Bottle
Also known as ‘the Demi'(meaning half in French) is a perfect bottle for those couples (or singles!) who don’t want to indulge in a whole bottle. Being 375ml, the half bottle serves a comfortable two glasses of wine

The Standard
The most common size in wine bottles. Appropriately 750ml, or around 4 glasses of wine. Some may not know that certain Reidel wine glasses (a high quality crystal wine glass) can hold an entire 750ml bottle of wine. Of course this is not the recommended serving, nor the amount you should have in a Reidel.

The Magnum
This whopper of a bottle weighs in at 1.5L, serving eight glasses of wine. This is usually only popular for special occasions, and is a bottle most likely found only in a specialty wine shop or directly from the vineyard.

The Jeroboam
If the Magnum seemed big, the Jeroboam might be considered the mother load !  Other wise known as the ‘Double Magnum’, the Jeroboam is an astounding 3liters, which could yield 16 glasses of wine. Although a rare commodity, the Jeroboam would sure to be a party pleaser!