Wine review

A COUPLE of weeks back my attention was drawn to a photo in a newspaper of an absolutely huge bottle of Claret and very impressive it was too.
By The Newsroom
Published 8th Mar 2010, 09:18 BST
Updated 8th Mar 2010, 16:40 BST

The wine in question was an 18 litre Melchior of Chateau Cheval Blanc, St Emilion 1er Grand Cru 2006 worth 4,000+ that was on display at Sothebys.

Larger format bottles, except for Magnums, are a bit of a wine rarity mainly confined to Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy and usually only available from specialist wine merchants or at auctions. Larger bottles are particularly favoured by serious Bordeaux collectors because of the small amount of air in bottle (between the cork and the wine) and a large amount of wine means the wine will develop very slowly. For Champagne, however, bigger bottles are just for show, like their use for winners in Formula 1, and tend to be filled using wine poured from single 750ml bottles prior to sale.

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There are many different sizes and many of their names have Biblical references - here are the main ones.

Magnum is a 1.5 litres or 2 bottles. Jeroboam (a biblical king) is three litres or four bottles. Methuselah (the Bible's oldest man) is six litres or eight bottles. Salamanzer (King of Assyria in the Bible) is nine litres or 12 bottles. Balthazer (probably one of the wise men) is 12 litres or 16 bottles. Nebuchadnezzar (King of Babylon in the bible) is 15 litres or 20 bottles. Melchior (probably another wise man) 18 litres or 24 bottles. The biggest in normal usage and for Champagne only is the 30 litres (or 40 bottles) Melchizedek.

by Paul Abraham