Probably many of you never noticed it, but the most accurate observers might have seen that the standard size for a wine bottle is 750 ml.

But what is the reason?

In 1975 the European Legislation on packaging (75/106) declared that the wine can be sold only if packed in certain measure containers, making the 750 ml size the most convenient for customers and winemakers.

There are many theories to explain this peculiar size.

One of these goes back to a very practical issue dated back to the 18° century, when they discovered the importance to store the wine in glass bottles.

At the time, the glass bottles were made by glass blowers. Their pulmonary strenght was obviously limited and permitted to create only bottles up to 650-750 ml size. So they decided to use the biggest one between those, the 750 ml bottle.

According to another theory 750 ml is the exact quantity of wine per 6 serving glasses (125ml each) used in “osteria”.

Others say that the 750 ml standard was a metric adaptation of the fifth (fifth of a gallon) which was standard in the US & Britain. In fact each box of wine could only contain 2 gallons and the Britishes decided to put 12 bottles per box. The result is 750 ml per bottle!

 

A presto,

VM