Wine Bottle Sizes: From Split to Nebuchadnezzar

The standard wine bottle holds 750 ml, about 25 ounces or five 5-ounce glasses. Everything else is a multiple or a fraction of it: a half bottle is 375 ml, a magnum is two bottles (1.5 liters), and the giant Nebuchadnezzar holds 15 liters, the same as 20 bottles. The chart below gives every common size with its liters, its value in standard bottles and how many glasses it pours, followed by box wine and the sizes US law allows.

Wine bottle sizes chart

Name	Volume	Standard bottles	5 oz glasses
Split or piccolo	187.5 ml	¼	About 1¼
Half bottle (demi)	375 ml	½	About 2½
500 ml bottle	500 ml	⅔	About 3⅓
Standard	750 ml	1	5
Liter	1 L	1⅓	About 6¾
Magnum	1.5 L	2	10
Double magnum (Jeroboam in Champagne)	3 L	4	20
Rehoboam (Champagne) or Jeroboam (Bordeaux)	4.5 L	6	30
Methuselah or Imperial	6 L	8	About 40
Salmanazar	9 L	12	About 61
Balthazar	12 L	16	About 81
Nebuchadnezzar	15 L	20	About 101
Solomon or Melchior	18 L	24	About 122

The names and volumes come from Wine Folly’s bottle size guide and Wine Spectator’s Dr. Vinny; the 500 ml and 1 L sizes are US standards of fill (see below). Glass counts are our own conversions: one US fluid ounce is about 29.6 ml, so a 750 ml bottle holds 25.4 ounces. Real pours vary, so treat the counts as planning numbers.

Note: The same name can mean different sizes. Dr. Vinny explains that a 3-liter bottle is called a Jeroboam in Champagne and Burgundy, but in Bordeaux a Jeroboam is 4.5 liters. If the size matters, check the volume on the label rather than the name.

Even bigger Champagne formats

Some Champagne houses list sizes beyond the Solomon. Canard-Duchêne’s guide adds the Sovereign (26.25 L, 35 bottles), the Primat (27 L, 36 bottles) and the Melchizedek or Midas (30 L, 40 bottles). It also notes that only standard bottles, magnums and Jeroboams age in their original bottles; larger formats start in standard 750 ml bottles and are transferred.

Champagne houses also count glasses differently from our table: Canard-Duchêne gives 12 glasses per magnum, which works out to about 125 ml (4.2 ounces) per glass.

What a standard glass is

The NIAAA defines a US standard drink as any drink containing 0.6 fluid ounces (14 grams) of pure alcohol. For wine, that is:

• 5 fluid ounces of table wine at about 12% alcohol;
• 3 to 4 fluid ounces of fortified wine, such as Port or Sherry, at about 17%.

That is why our chart uses a 5-ounce pour. For Port and other dessert wines poured at 3 to 4 ounces, a 750 ml bottle stretches to about six to eight glasses.

The common sizes, one by one

Split or piccolo (187 ml)

Wine Folly calls the 187.5 ml split or piccolo about one serving of Champagne. The US standard of fill is 187 ml.

Half bottle (375 ml)

A half bottle, or demi, holds 375 ml, two and a half glasses. In our view it’s the right size for dinner for two. It is also common for dessert wines: Wikipedia notes that half bottles are common for ice wine, which is poured in small glasses.

Smaller bottles may age a little faster. Wine Spectator’s Dr. Vinny explains that the air inside an unopened bottle is about the same whatever the bottle’s size, so a small bottle has more air for its amount of wine. His advice: when a critic gives a drinking window, use the earlier end of it for smaller bottles and the later end for larger ones. We’d drink half bottles of red within the first half of a critic’s window.

Standard bottle (750 ml)

The 750 ml bottle is the default worldwide. It holds 25.4 US fluid ounces: five 5-ounce glasses, or four generous 6-ounce pours.

Magnum (1.5 L)

A magnum is two standard bottles in one, ten 5-ounce glasses. Following Dr. Vinny’s advice, a magnum sits at the later end of a wine’s drinking window. In our view, a magnum is also the easiest way to make a dinner for eight feel like an occasion: one bottle on the table instead of two.

Double magnum and Jeroboam (3 L)

Three liters, or four standard bottles, is where the names start to vary: double magnum for still wine, Jeroboam in Champagne and Burgundy. It is also the size of a standard box of wine.

The giants (4.5 to 18 L)

Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar, Nebuchadnezzar and Solomon are, in our view, bottles for big celebrations. A 6-liter Methuselah holds eight bottles’ worth of wine, so we’d only buy one with a plan for who will pour it.

Box wine equivalents

Bag-in-box wine is sold by the liter, so it is easy to compare:

Box size	Standard bottles	5 oz glasses
3 L	4	About 20
5 L	About 6⅔	About 34

A 3-liter box is the most common. Our guide to the best box wine works out the price per 750 ml bottle for the main brands, which is how we compare boxes with bottles.

US legal wine bottle sizes

Wine bottled for sale in the US must use one of the standards of fill in federal rules. Under 27 CFR 4.72, enforced by the TTB (the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau), they are:

US standards of fill for wine
3 L, 2.25 L, 1.8 L, 1.5 L, 1 L
750 ml, 720 ml, 700 ml, 620 ml, 600 ml, 568 ml, 550 ml, 500 ml
473 ml, 375 ml, 360 ml, 355 ml, 330 ml, 300 ml, 250 ml
200 ml, 187 ml, 180 ml, 100 ml, 50 ml

Containers larger than 3 liters are allowed if they are filled and labeled in even liters: 4 liters, 5 liters, 6 liters and so on. That means a 4.5-liter Rehoboam isn’t one of the US standards of fill, while 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 liters are even liters. The rule’s history on the Cornell page lists its latest amendment as T.D. TTB-200, dated January 20, 2025.

Several of these, such as 355 ml (12 ounces) and 250 ml, match common can sizes. Two 375 ml cans or bottles equal one standard bottle; a 250 ml can is a third of a bottle, or about 1⅔ glasses.

Which size to buy

• One or two people, one evening: a half bottle, or a standard bottle with a stopper for the leftovers.
• Dinner party of six to eight: a magnum, or two or three standard bottles.
• A party: boxes or several magnums. Our wine party calculator turns guests and hours into bottles.
• A single glass of sparkling wine: a split.

For more serving and storage basics, browse Wine Basics.

Wine is for adults of legal drinking age (21 in the US). Please drink responsibly.