Tomorrow we bid farewell to the old and usher in the New Year. But quick, before you pop that bottle of bubbly: what’s the difference between a split and a Methuselah?
It’s not, as someone crudely observed, the difference between a talented ballerina and a stiff old man, but a difference in bottle size.
A split is a small bottle of 20cl of champagne, which is just a little drop more than what’s called a piccolo or pony for serving the wines they offer on aeroplanes in volumes of 18.75cl. Better known as a quarter, this is a handy little bottle to present as wine-by-the-glass in pubs and bars and which can also be given away as gifts at celebratory events like weddings and anniversary parties.
Then there’s Jennie, holding half a litre of wine and commonly used for tokaji, sherry, sauternes and other sweet wines such as Malta’s Grand Vin de Hauteville Moscato. In France, this size is dubbed a Demie.
Marie-Jeanne is an unusual bottle type that pours one bottle more than a magnum which itself takes 1.5 litres. The shape is unusual at about the same height as a standard bottle but with a greater circumference in the body and a thicker neck.
Some wines are laid down in double magnums of three litres of wine, which don’t only look great but allow the wine to age and develop over longer periods.
A number of champagne bottles go by grander names of ancient patriarchs borrowed from the Tanakh of Judaism. The glass bottles seem to have been fanciful creations and most of the time it’s unestablished who invented them first or why.
With names of biblical kings, massive wine bottles combine magnitude with mystique. In most cases it’s unknown in which language they first appeared to identify a particular volume of wine. But the word Jeroboam, the founder and first king of Israel who ruled for 22 years, can apparently be first attributed to a huge wine bottle in a work by Sir Walter Scott who referred to him as ‘a man of great worth’.
The Champenois followed suit with making and filling up even bigger glass bottles in the 1940s and it seems that they’ve kept on selecting patriarchs’ titles ever since.
The namesake bottle of Methuselah, who is said to have lived the longest at the age of 969 in the Hebrew Bible, easily holds eight glorious bottles while Salmanazar is that 12-bottle-sized rarity, guaranteed to break the ice at parties and the pourer’s back.
By the way, Balthazar, the King of Babylon in 539BC and good for some odd 12 litres of wine, was listed together with Methuselah and Salmanazar for the first time in André Simon’s Dictionary of Wine in 1935.
The most difficult name to pronounce is probably Nebuchadnezzar, corresponding to no fewer than 20 bottles. Or, is it Melchizedek, the tongue-twister equivalent to 40 bottles or 300 flutes, standing 110 centimetres tall and weighing 53 kilos? If you’re not macho by nature, either one will require a power tool to pull the cork.
In such grand bottles is the promise of family gatherings, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, reunions and even wakes. Their very size will make any get-together special. If the Freudians among you think that there are subconscious reasons why we treasure our big bottles above all others, I can live with that.
Oh, yes, before I forget: a regular, standard bottle equals three-quarters of a litre. But why is it that, as we get closer to the stroke of midnight surrounded by family and friends, normal-sized bottles tend to appear smaller?
Wishing you a vigorous, fruitful and cheery 2017. Enjoy your wine sensibly and never drink and drive. Happy New Year!