SIZE DOES MATTER!
Krug, Dom, Mumm…there is no beverage in the world that typifies celebration like
Champagne. Powerful, elegant, structured and seamless, it’s produced exclusively withinthe Champagne region of France, from which it takes its name. For decades, we’vewatched in awe as racing car drivers vaporise titanic-sized bottles of Champagne aboveadoring fanatics. But exactly how much do we know about these beautiful glass structuresand the biblical names for which many of them are known? The world’s most glorious fizzis saluted for its many different sized bottles, so let’s pop the cork on a couple and findout why.
There are roughly thirteen different sized bottles in which Champagne is produced,although there will be some variation to this figure depending on which country you’retalking about. Juxtaposed in ascending order, one might even liken them to a familyof wooden Russian dolls! Bottles ascending from a capacity of 750ml are producedin smaller quantities and are always worth more than just a factor of their standardsize counterpart. It is this very philosophy that justifies their rarity and grand sense ofoccasion.
The smallest bottle is called a split, or piccolo if you’re speaking Italian. It measures just187ml and is equal to a quarter of a standard bottle. Its bigger sibling, known as a Demiin France, is half a standard bottle of wine. The standard bottle is undoubtedly the sizewe’re all most familiar with and at 750ml, is the world’s most manufactured Champagnebottle size. Now we start to get into deeper water. A Magnum is equal to two standardbottles or 1.5 Litres and is known the world over as one of the biggest selling volumes.Double the fizz and it becomes a Double Magnum, or Jeroboam, as it is known in theFrench appellations of Champagne and Burgundy. Climbing higher, the Rehoboam is 4.5Litres and equal to a whopping 6 bottles of wine. An Imperial, also commonly referredto as a Methusaleh in its home region of Champagne, represents 8 standard bottles – acommanding 6 Litres.
Pour an entire case of Champagne into a something much larger and you have yourselfa Salmanazar, a towering nine litres. A Balthazar, which is the equivalent of 16 standardbottles or 12 litres, is also the name commonly attributed to one of the Three Wise Men.Whilst there are even larger bottles, the Nebuchadnezzar is commercially recognised asthe Grand Daddy of them all, weighing in at 15 Litres and holding 20 standard bottles.For what it’s worth, the current World Record for the largest bottle of wine is held by atalented group of Australian winemakers from the Great Southern wine region of WesternAustralia, who produced the Five Virtues Shiraz 2005. This spectacular structure stands atsix feet and five inches tall, swallows 387 bottles of wine and is sealed with a cork worth$3,500! The Wine Society’s parcel of this wonderful drop however, is only available in thehumble standard size bottle!