Why is 750ml the standard wine bottle size?

Usually, when we go to a shop to buy a bottle of wine, we will see that practically all of them are 750 ml. in capacity. It is interesting, since other measures such as 500 ml (half a litre) or 1,000 ml (1 litre) could be the standard. But no, the most common size of wine bottles is 750 ml.

An explanation with a bit of history

This has an explanation based on history, dating back to the 19th century. It turns out that, at that time, the main buyers of French wine (the most popular) were English customers. But, as we know, the English use different metric units for almost everything (distance, capacity, weight...). In particular, in England they used the "imperial gallon" as a unit of volume. 1 imperial gallon was approximately equivalent to 4.54 litres.

When transporting wine from Bordeaux, they used barrels of 50 gallons, i.e. 225 litres. And to divide this amount of wine into bottles, it was found that exactly 300 750-millilitre bottles could be filled. The aim was to simplify the accounts: 1 barrel = 300 bottles (75 cl.). This made calculating prices, bottles, barrels... much easier.

Other (incorrect) theories

You may read elsewhere other theories explaining why wine bottles are 750ml. They may say that it is because it is easier to transport, because wine is better preserved in bottles of this size, because in a meal the average consumption is one bottle? but no. The real explanation lies in this decision to facilitate the calculation of barrels and bottles.

It also explains why cases of wine generally contain 6 or 12 bottles. They are multiples of 300, which was the number of bottles that could be filled with a barrel. Thus, it was easier to divide it into 50 cases of 6 bottles, or 25 cases of 12 bottles.

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