About a year ago, I had a friend who “makes” wine at a local store (in other words, my friend pitches the yeast and then helps with the bottling – all the work is done by the store) give me a bottle of a Gewurtztraminer that he had “made.” The bottle was 375 ml in size. I know some folk who will bottle some of their wine in these small size bottles, and I do the same at times. However, a comment on Jack Keller’s blog got me to thinking a bit more about when and why I choose 375 ml over 750 ml, and when I might even select magnum size bottles.

Jack’s comment:

“A preface. I do not put all of my mead in 375 mL bottles, even though I know many do. I only fill two 375 mL bottles with each mead, and these are for tasting to see if the mead has aged enough to drink. I enter full, 750 mL bottles in competition unless 375 mL bottles are actually required, which they rarely are. You do as you desire.”
~ Jack Keller (Scroll down to the May 22nd, 2009 entry)

Personally, I’d never give anything less than a 750 ml bottle of wine as a gift if I’ve made wine from a kit that makes 23 litres of wine. It just seems “chintzy” to me. However, there are times when I do consider a 375 ml bottle for both gift purposes and my own use. I have my own arbitrary thoughts about it and as Jack says, “You do as you desire.”

First, I seldom bottle into 375 ml or magnum size bottles. Most of my wines and meads go into 750 ml. But then, most of my wines are 23 litre (5 Imperial gallons). I like the standard 750 size, and corking them is easy. Corking the 375 ml bottles with my Portuguese floor corker is a bit awkward – I need to put a block of wood over the bottle stand in order to give them enough height to be corked. And that means I also need to hold them steady. As well, obviously there are more bottles to be filled when using 375 ml.

When I do bottle into 375 ml size bottles, it’s when I’ve made 3 or less gallons of a particular wine or mead, or when I’ve made something exceptional and I’d like to be able to give away as many as possible to friends and clients while still keeping a good amount for myself. For example, a few years ago I made a 5 gallon batch of blackcurrant wine that turned out to be like heaven. That went into 350 ml bottles – and many were given away. The recent Kiwi Melomel that I made was 3 gallons, and it too turned out exceptional, so I have all of it in the smaller size bottles.

As far as magnum size bottles, the only time I can think of that I’d consider bottling into those would be if I was making wine for some special event where there was a corkage fee for bringing my own wine instead of purchasing the wine provided by the venue. If I were trying to save costs, then reducing the number of bottles that needed to be opened might be a time I’d think of magnums.

But then, that’s just another advantage of home winemaking. You can choose whatever size of bottles you’d like to use for whatever your purposes or reasons are. One caution though: smaller quantities might be more susceptible to temperature changes when aging your wine. Just as wine in a 5 gallon carboy won’t be as susceptible to temperature variations while aging as much as wine in a 750 ml bottle will be, wines in 375 ml bottles will be more susceptible than that in 750 ml bottles.

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