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A guide to wine bottle sizes. What are the different capacities and names of wine bottles.

Capacity (litres) Bottle Equivalents Bordeaux Name Champagne Name
0.1875 - Piccolo -
0.25 quarter Chopine -
0.375 - Demi-bottle -
0.5 - Jennie -
0.62 - Clavelin -
.75 1 Bottle Bottle
0.757 - Fifth -
1.5 2 Magnum Magnum
2.25 3 Marie Jeanne -
3 4 Double Magnum Jeroboam
4.5 6 Jeroboam Rehoboam
6 8 Imperial Methuselah
9 12 Salmanazar
12 16 Balthazar
15 20 Nebuchadnezzar
18 24 Melchior Melchior/Solomon
27 36 Primat
30 40 - Melchizedek

champagne bottles

And who are these extra large bottles named after? Well Jeroboam is the name of “a mighty man of valour who made Israel to sin” 1 Kings 11:28 14:16.

Rehoboam was the son of Solomon while Methuselah is a Pre-Noachian patriarch stated to have lived 969 years.

The reign of
Nebuchadnezzar extended from B.C. 604 to 561. In 598BC he laid siege to Jerusalem
and in 588 again captured the city, and carried Zedekiah, who had rebelled against him, captive to Babylon. The name Nebuchadnezzar, or more accurately Nebuchadrezzar is derived from the Jewish Scriptures.

But in the inscriptions it reads Nebo-kudurri-ussur, i.e., “may Nebo protect the crown”; a name analogous to that of his father Nebo(Nabu)-habal-ussur. (“Nebo protect the son”) and to that of Belshazzar, i.e., “Bel protect the prince.”

Not just a wine bottle size guide but plenty of historical culture too! As for the others……..

Melchior, King of Light and Balthazar, King of Treasures are two of the Three Wise Men (the other being Gaspar, The White One). Finally, Salmanazar, was an Assyrian king.

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