Large Bottles Make BIG Impressions! or

Size does matter.

There's nothing like bringing out an impressive, truly large bottle at a big celebration like a wedding or anniversary party. It's an immediate attention getter. We call them festive bottles because once you open one you have to drink the whole thing

Collectors love big bottles for a couple of reasons: most wineries bottle very few of them, so there's a rarity factor and the bigger the bottle, the more slowly and gracefully the wine ages. This is because the larger the volume of wine, the smaller the surface area, and the slower the oxygen diffusion. Slower maturation often translates into better maturation when it comes to wine. Plus, the larger volume of liquid takes longer to warm or cool and is more resistant to potentially damaging temperature fluctuations. Anyway, if you want to put a bottle down for some far-off great occasion, you're smart to get a large-format bottle. Conversely, if you're in a hurry, get a half bottle. Half bottles don't age well. In fact, some wineries don't bottle them for fear of a loss of quality. They're more subject to oxidation because the neck and ullage are proportionally larger for the amount of wine. In terms of pricing, wine bucks convention and there's no volume discount, in fact quite the opposite. As the bottle gets bigger and bigger, it alone becomes very costly and that will be reflected in the cost of the wine to you.

Bottle sizes and Names

Large format bottles carry some rather impressive names. You probably know that a double-bottle is called a magnum. This comes from the Latin, translating as "a big one!" As the bottles get bigger many of them take on the names of biblical Kings. But, assigning the right name to the big bottle gets a little murky, depending upon its shape. For instance a double magnum, or 3-liter bottle, is called a double magnum in the Bordeaux shape, but it's a Jeroboam if it's a Champagne or Burgundy-type. Champagne and Burgundy are aligned in their names and Bordeaux goes its own way.

The 4.5-liter bottle doesn't seem to be an important part of the American repertoire, but in Bordeaux it is the Jeroboam and this 6-bottle equivalent is called a Rehoboam in Burgundy and Champagne.

A six-liter, the equivalent of 8 bottles and very festive indeed, is called a Methuselah in Burgundy and Champagne, and the Bordeaux equivalent is called the Imperial. Many great Napa Valley Cabernets are bottled in this size. Bordeaux wines aren't bottled in anything larger than an Imperial except on rare occasion, but a nine-liter bottle of Burgundy, better known as "a case in a bottle" is a Salmanazar.

If a case in a bottle isn't enough for you, then a 12-liter, which is 16 bottles, is a Balthazar. For a truly large bottle of Burgundy-type, a fifteen-liter bottle is the equivalent of 20 bottles and is called a Nebuchadnessar. That's going to be one great party!

All of this may seem a little over the top, but these bottles have brought in untold millions at charity auctions over the years due to their rarity. But just to take a look at another side of wine packaging, you should know that at a recent blind tasting at a Society of Wine Educators conference, a panel of experts showed a preference for wine from a 3-liter box compared to the same wine from a 750- milliliter bottle by two to one. Maybe quantity is a virtue no matter the packaging! For you marketing and spin enthusiasts, the box was referred to as a "3-liter premium cask." The tasters also showed a preference for a screw-cap finished wine over the same wine from a cork-finished bottle. Perhaps the true test would have been comparing a 3-liter bottle with the 3-liter box, but it still makes a strong statement about the efficacy of the bag-in-box format and the members of The Alliance for Innovative Wine Packaging, who were present at the tasting, were delighted with the results.

The world is changing so quickly, even our tradition-bound wine industry, that who's to say what kinds of containers and closures we'll be using in another fifty years? As always, whether it's a bag-in-box or a priceless Nebuchadnezzar, the most important thing is to enjoy the wine with friends, family and great food.