Size of Bottles

[Megs]

Can someone please enlighten me as to why wine is bottled in 750ml's and not a litre?

[Kcwhippet]

It's a governmentally regulated standard. However, you can find wine in many other size bottles.

[Thomas]

The ancient reason goes back to shipping vessel sizes, after Portugal invented the so-called Bordeaux bottle (the one with the shoulder).

But the real reason is modern: Louis Pasteur stated in one of his dissertations on wine that 375ml a day seemed desirable for humans to get the full benefit of wine's healthy and sanitary aspects--multiply 375 times 2 and you get a bottle of wine for two at dinner!

[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 12-31-2003).]

[Brom]

The question maybe should not be why they are 750 ml., but why they were a fifth of a gallon (4 fifths of a quart).

We converted to the metric system and lost .3 ounce - the 750 ml size is that close. In Britain, they still refer to a 375 ml bottle as a "pint".

The apocraphyl origin of the fifth bottle contrasts to the Pasteur story. In America, a fifth was deemed to be a portion for a man.

Wines originally were shipped in cask and bottled by distributors.

I am not so sure that the "Bordeaux" bottle was invented in Portugal, as wines were being estate-bottled in the Bordeaux long before Porto was being bottled in Portugal. It is also true that Porto bottles are shaped somewhat differently than Bordeaux bottles.

[Drew]

Funny thing is the wine industry was mandated by Congress in 1977 to use metric size bottles as the industry standard but for tax purposes, all wineries are required to report production in gallons, not liters...go figure.

Drew

[Kcwhippet]

That's what I was referring to when I mentioned the "governmentally regulated standard".

[Thomas]

Brom, you picked up on my expansive use of the word "ancient" which, considering pedants like you and me, I should have not been so reckless in using. I did mean to say it was the "old" wine industry that established the shoulder bottle. After complaints from exporters and importers alike about storage problems on ships, the Portuguese came up with the shoulder bottle; its ease of stacking made storage more efficient, including allowing for more wine to be stored on the ships; they could not have done it, however, without the use of corks, which also came under their domain.

The British established the Bordeaux wine industry; they likely used the shoulder bottle that they had had contact with while doing extensive wine business with the Portuguese.

Portuguese influence on the wine business is fantastic; they established the first demarcation regulations and we all know they are the cork kings! Their wines were in unprecedented demand between the 15th and 19th centuries, a period of many technological wine discoveries, and so they had a stake in innovation.

750ml is approximately 25.4 ounces, close to 1/5 of a gallon (4/5 of a quart) indeed, but I am not sure if you refer to Pasteur's claim as an apochryfal story or the US conversion as a way to deny the story. What I do know is that Pasteur's reference to 375ml of wine each day per person is in the history books, and it might have been behind the development of that standard throughout Europe. The US was made up of Europeans, so many of our standards came from that connection, but Britain, not France, had a major influence on our weights and measures standards. I guess the size of the alcohol bottles had a lot to do with standardized bottle-makers.

As for the US government regs, they are a mess of stupidity based on no coherent thinking--the ml. to gallons conversion is a case in point, and a true pain in the backside when I was producing wine.



[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 01-01-2004).]