Large format bottles...what's with the names?

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NorCal

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Since I'm making a barrel of the iconic red wine Cabernet Sauvignon, I thought it would be fun to bottle a large format bottle. So far I have received or bottled 220ml (my wife calls the "why bother" size), 375ml, 750ml and the 1500ml. Got it, from mini to magnum. So, I decided I wanted to go bigger and of course the first place I look is Craigslist. It took a few weeks, but I scored a Double Magnum 3,000ml (4 bottles of wine) for $5.

I found that these big format bottles all have some weird names tied to random things, this one a Jeroboam.

It will take some label removing, PBW on the inside and figuring out a cork and capsule, but should be fun to break out at a big party some time. Pictures to come.
 
There is a method to the naming process, I can't explain it but I know it exists... Here are the names of the various bottle sizes.
Bottle Name Size
Pony -189 ml wine
Half-bottle or Split - 375 ml wine
Bottle - 750 ml wine
Magnum - 2 wine bottles (1.5L)
Marie-Jean - 3 wine bottles
Double Magnum - 4 wine bottles (3.0L)
Jeroboam (sparkling wines) - 4 wine bottles (3.0L)
Reboboam (red wines) - 6 wine bottles (4.5L)
Imperial - 8 wine bottles (6.0L)
Methuselah (sparkling wines) - 8 wine bottles (6.0L)
Salmanazar - 12 wine bottles (9.0L = 1 case)
Balthazar - 16 wine bottles (12.0L)
Nebuchadnezzar - 20 wine bottles (15.0L)
Soverign - 67 wine bottles (50L)

FOUND IT>>>
Meaning of Wine Bottle Sizes

Curiously, the historic convention for naming wine bottle sizes is based on the names of biblical kings. As with many parts of the aesthetics of wine, nomenclature for wine bottle formats reconnects us to the structures of wine culture. Wine has long been a living part of our history and day-to-day lives, and so unsurprisingly the bottle names are connected to one of our oldest documents. To be fair, no one really knows how this convention started for sure. If you know, we’d love to be enlightened. We could do some “research” and see if the answer can be found at the bottom of six liter? I bet you we’d discover something. Below is a list of wine bottle sizes and their names.

The whole story is here: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/wine-bottle-sizes/
 
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