A Guide to Wine Bottle Sizes, from Magnum to Melchizedek [Video]

With the rise of flat bottles and feather-light bottles, innovation abounds in wine packaging. Regardless of the bottle shape, however, one size reigns supreme: the classic 750-milliliter wine bottle.

According to Bijan Ghiai, beverage director for Urban Hill in Salt Lake City, Utah, winemakers have been packaging in glass bottles since the 17th century.  The shapes and sizes didn’t become more uniform until the early 1970s, when importing and exporting wine became more common. A universal size makes taxes, customs, shipping, and storage much smoother.

Most likely, 750 milliliters became the gold standard due to simple math, adds Johnny Walker, beverage director at Shota Omakase in New York City. Searching for common ground between metric and imperial systems of measurement, France and the U.S. agreed to store wine in barrels of 225 liters, the equivalent of 50 gallons. 

“From there, it’s just a game of finding the common denominator,” Walker says, and 300 bottles at …