Size of Bottles

[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).]