Champagne Bottles

CHAMPAGNE IS A HIGHLY REGULATED REGION, EVEN DOWN TO THE SIZE OF THE BOTTLES. THE APPELLATION ALLOWS A WIDER ARRAY OF BOTTLE SIZES THAN ANYWHERE ELSE IN FRANCE AND THEY RANGE FROM THE TINY ‘QUARTER’ OR ‘PICCOLO’, JUST 20CL, WHICH IS LARGELY USELESS FOR MANY VARIED AND OBVIOUS REASONS, TO THE MASSIVE AND RARELY SEEN ‘MIDAS’, WHICH HOLDS 30 LITRES, THE EQUIVALENT OF 40 ‘STANDARD’ BOTTLES.

WORDS KEN GARGETT

THE STANDARD CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE is 750ml. What is crucial in purchasing Champagne is to know that it comes in a bottle which allows the wine to have been made in the traditional method – fermented in that very bottle. Tiny bottles, and very large ones (only a few Houses ferment in the bottle if it is bigger than a magnum), are usually filled by Champagne being transferred into that awkward size. It might be the ‘same’ wine, but it will simply never be quite the same quality and freshness. It is why those tiny piccolos on flights so often disappoint.

The next most popular size is the magnum, 1.5 litres. Many think it is the ideal size, not just for drinking, but for maturing the wine while it is on lees.

As with so much to do with Champagne, they have managed to take the mundane – bottle sizes – and weave extraordinary stories about them. The names, for an example. Biblical tags have been attached to most sizes, though this is far from unique to Champagne. Perhaps the most fascinating surround Sir Winston Churchill – as so many of the best Champagne stories do, which is hardly surprising given it is alleged that he drank around 42,000 bottles over the course of his life, a great many of them from his favourite House, Pol Roger.

For many years, some Houses also offered their Champagne in Imperial pints. Whether true or simply an urban myth (enough authorities suggest it is true to make one feel that it really is), one often hears that Pol Roger was induced to start bottling their Champagne in this size, just for Churchill. It is said that his wife, Clementine, disapproved of him drinking a full bottle before lunch and Churchill himself, disapproved of half bottles, thinking them a waste of time. The Imperial pint was the compromise. Sadly, European bureaucrats put the kibosh on that size, making them illegal. Houses could make and sell them in many markets around the world today, but not in Europe. Hence they are never seen. Quite what the bureaucrats achieved by this, other than earning their weekly paycheck, is not clear.

The names associated with these bottles are, as mentioned, not restricted only to Champagne. It is worth noting that these sizes are not consistent across France and they do vary from region to region. The origins of the Biblical names are often argued over – authorities will occasionally claim different reasons as to their history. Those given below seem the most popular/ likely, but there is every chance that with some of these sizes, we will never know the exact reason or background. The names have been in use for a great number of years. There are references to ‘Jeroboam’ as a bottle containing the equivalent of four standard bottles, as far back as 1725. THE SIZES ARE –

QUARTER/PICCOLO – 20cl.

HALF – 375ml. Sometimes called a demi.

STANDARD – 750ml.

MAGNUM – 1.5 litres (two bottles).

JEROBOAM – 3 litres (four bottles). In other parts of France, a Jeroboam holds 4.5 litres. The larger size usually applies to still wines. Jeroboam was the name of several of the Kings of Israel, including the King considered to be the founder of the city and the one most likely after whom the bottle is named.

REHOBOAM – 4.5 litres (six bottles). Only so named in Champagne and in practice, effectively never, as this size offends bureaucrats in both Europe and the USA. Named after the son of Solomon.

METHUSALEM – 6 litres (8 bottles). In Bordeaux, often called an Imperiale. This size is named after the famous Biblical character from Genesis (Genesis 5.27). It is claimed he lived to the grand old age of 969 (40,000 bottles of Champagne only got Churchill into his 90s – how many might Methusalem have enjoyed?). As his descendant, Noah, was supposedly

1/4 1/2 Bottle Magnum Jeroboam Rehoboam Methusalem Salmanazar Balthazar Nebuchadnezzar Solomon Sovereign Primat Midas

Bottles 1 2 4 6 8 12 16 20 24 35 36 40

the first man to plant vines, there is a nice connection.

SALMANAZAR – 9 litres (12 bottles). There are a number of different spellings of this name/size. There are five Kings named Salmanazar, so it is anyone’s guess to whom the honour belongs. Salmanazar III, a great builder, is considered the most famous, so perhaps it was him.

BALTHAZAR – 12 litres (16 bottles). This one is delightfully confusing. Many authorities assume it is named after one of the three Magi, but others have pointed out that Scripture does not name the three wise men, nor actually confirm that there were three (I’ll take their word for it). Apparently, the only Balthazar in the Bible is a King of Babylon who lived some 500 years before Christ and was keener on dancing than fighting, to the ultimate detriment of his Kingdom.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR – 15 litres (20 bottles). Another Babylonian King, one who pre-dated Balthazar and was known as ‘Nebuchadnezzar the Great’. He supposedly turned Babylon into the cultural centre of the known world at that time, and also sacked Jerusalem.

Those last three are quite rare, and often, almost always, Houses will use the transfer method to fill them. The final four are rarer still.

SOLOMON – 18 litres (24 bottles). Solomon was, of course, the King of Israel and son of David.

SOVEREIGN – 26.25 litres (35 bottles). A size I have never encountered, but apparently one created in 1988 by Taittinger, to celebrate the launch of what was then the largest cruise ship in the world, the ‘Sovereign of the Seas’.

PRIMAT – 27 litres (36 bottles). Primat is, I was surprised to learn, another name for Goliath. Not inappropriate, given the size of this bottle.

MIDAS – 30 litres (40 bottles). Also called a Melchizedec. By this stage, the empty bottle alone will weigh near 100 kilograms and be over a metre tall. According to Genesis, Melchizedec was the King of Salem who blessed Abram and provided him with bread and wine. Midas is, of course, the Greek King who turned everything he touched to gold. That is perhaps also appropriate as the only producer I have encountered of this Champagne is Armand de Brignac, who use a gold-coloured bottle.

To remember the larger bottles, between Magnum and Nebuchadnezzar, some in the region use the following mnemonic device – “My Judy Really Makes Splendid Belching Noises”.

Perhaps the most famous standard bottle in Champagne is that of Louis Roederer’s ‘Cristal’. Roederer had a huge market in Russia back in the time of the Tsars. Cristal was first created for Alexander II in 1867 and when it came to his famous ‘Three Emperors Dinner’ (a famous dinner held at the Café Anglais in Paris in 1867 with King William I of Prussia, Tsar Alexander II and also his son, later Alexander III and Prince Otto von Bismarck), there were some instructions for Roederer. The bottle must be clear. He was keen to see the bubbles, but more importantly, he wanted to be able to see that no bombs were hidden within. The flat bottom was supposedly so no potential assassin could sneak broken glass or other dangerous foreign material into the bottle, where it might not be noticed as it slid down the side of the punt.

Roederer commissioned a Flemish glassblower to make the clear bottle – authorities debate whether this first release was made from “lead glass” or “crystal” (as apparently, there was an easy swapping of the terms and the two substances being quite similar, it hardly matters as anything more than a technicality), but it quickly became known as ‘Cristal’. ❧