History: Size

The size and shape of early bottles was, to an extent, a hit and miss affair. Perhaps the ‘standard’ size was the natural result of a lungful of air, but bottles were made in a variety of sizes from early times. The onion or bladder shape can sometimes be found in extremely large sizes holding up to 30 bottles. The general term for a large early bottle is a carboy but the word magnum was also used somewhat impressively for a bottle of about double normal capacity. For a long while a bottle was more or less 1¼ UK pints (70 cl or 25 fl oz) and a magnum was a quart (1.12 l or 40 fl oz). Until the 1970s, when eu and other legislation enforced standardization, bottles varied from about 65 to 85 cl, champagne and burgundy tending to be larger than those for bordeaux, while sherry bottles were often smaller.