Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Square shoulders at 90°, a straight cylindrical body. The shoulder catches the sediments of a wine meant to age long and be served lying down. Born in the 18th century to make stackable cellars — engineering came before aesthetics.
Shapes and sizes
of wine bottles.
Why a Bordeaux has square shoulders, why a Magnum ages better, and what a flask’s shape says about the wine inside.
A bottle has never been a mere container. Each regional silhouette answers a technical problem — catching sediment, holding pressure, steadying a pour — that glassblowers solved three centuries before anyone read beauty into it.
Large formats are more than a dinner-table effect. The ratio between wine and the air under the cork shifts with size: a magnum oxidises twice as slowly as a bottle. It’s geometry applied to slow chemistry.
What follows: twelve regional silhouettes from France and Italy, then thirteen volumes from the Piccolo to the Sovereign. Each bottle is drawn in SVG, to scale, so they can be compared at a glance.
Chapter 01 · Silhouettes
Twelve silhouettes, twelve problems solved.
A bottle’s shape gives away its origin before the label does. Here are the twelve any amateur can read without reading — and what each one had to solve in order to exist.
Burgundy
Burgundy
No shoulder. A continuous curve from neck to body, no break. Pinot noir and chardonnay don’t need a shoulder to trap sediment: the line is what matters. The oldest shape still in use, inherited from the Morvan glassworks.
Champagne
Champagne
A thickened Burgundy to withstand the 6 bars of pressure from the second fermentation. Heavy glass, a deep punt, a muselet and a golden aluminium foil. Without this anatomy, the bottle would explode during the prise de mousse.
Clavelin
Jura
62 cl instead of 75. Short, squat, with “JURA” moulded into the glass. The volume reflects what remains of a litre of savagnin after six years and three months under a veil of yeast: the angels’ share, written into the format. The only legal container for vin jaune.
Alsace flute
Alsace & Moselle
Slim, shoulderless, continuous neck. Inherited from the 16th-century Rhineland valleys. Traditionally green glass in Alsace, brown in the German Moselle — a border question, not a grape one.
Rhône
Rhône Valley
A direct cousin of the Burgundy, often carrying a moulded crest on the shoulder for controlled appellations. Châteauneuf-du-Pape pushed the logic to a relief coat of arms with papal keys — protection against counterfeit, from 1937 onwards.
Nantaise
Pays Nantais
Shorter and squatter than a classic Bordeaux, often stamped with a relief star on the shoulder — the Nantes star, mark of the local winegrowers’ union since 1951. A wine from the lees, straight and iodised, in a flask that owns its geography.
Corset flute
Provence
Hourglass silhouette, cinched waist, low hips. A shape nearly exclusive to Provence rosés, designed to hold the table as an object — rosé here sells as much by the flask as by the content, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Pot lyonnais
Beaujolais & Lyonnais
46 cl, thick base, short neck. Cut to sit on a zinc counter without toppling. The legal format of a Beaujolais pot in a Lyon bouchon since an 1843 decree — a measure born so the canut worker could still keep his midday wine.
Basquaise
Armagnac & South-West
A flattened flask, wide bell-shaped shoulders, straight flanks. Designed for armagnac — a spirit that ages in the barrel, then shows itself. The large framed label owns the spirit side: you read the vintage from afar, through the smoke of a shared table.
Port
Douro
A neck with a bulb — a small ball that catches sediment on pouring. Sealed with red wax running down the shoulder: the signature of vintage ports. Opaque glass, nearly black, to protect a fortified wine that lives 40 years in bottle without flinching.
Fiasco
Tuscany
A spherical globe in a woven straw basket, very long neck. Mouth-blown glass couldn’t stand without support, and the straw woven by contadini acted as the base. Nearly gone since the 1980s — but the chianti classico you drink from it has never been better.
Chapter 02 · Formats
From the Piccolo to the Sovereign.
Thirteen volumes, one graphical scale. Bottles are drawn to the cube root of their volume — which is the actual ratio between two flasks holding the same wine at two different sizes.
20 cl
37.5 cl
75 cl
1.5 L
3 L
4.5 L
6 L
9 L
12 L
15 L
18 L
20 L
26.25 L
Piccolo
01
20 cl · ¼ bottle
A quarter bottle. Historically served on night trains and in aviation — you open, you drink, you don’t leave a finish for two. Mostly champagne today.
Fillette
02
37.5 cl · ½ bottle
The half bottle. Perfect for a dinner for two with no commitment, or to open a cellar wine a little younger: the smaller glass surface speeds ageing, you taste an anticipated version.
Bottle
03
75 cl · reference
The standard. 75 cl because that’s what a 17th-century glassblower could exhale in a single breath — one puff, one bottle. The format has held for three centuries because it also maps to six glasses, the right table for two.
Magnum
04
1.5 L · 2 bottles
The format that changes everything. More wine for nearly the same air under the cork: oxidation slows down, ageing goes longer and finer. A 20-year-old magnum tastes like a 15-year-old bottle. For cellar wines, this is the container of truth.
Jeroboam
05
3 L (Burgundy) · 4.5 L (Bordeaux) · 4 or 6 bottles
The only name with two volumes depending on the region. 3 L in Burgundy and Champagne, 4.5 L in Bordeaux. The ambiguity goes back to the 19th century, when each merchant set their own biblical equivalents — and nobody ever resolved it.
Rehoboam
06
4.5 L · 6 bottles
Mostly champenois. Named after Solomon’s son, first king of Judah. Used by the grandes maisons for formal events — more imposing than a Burgundy Jeroboam, less rare than a Methuselah.
Methuselah (Imperial in Bordeaux)
07
6 L · 8 bottles
A wedding format. Named after the Bible’s oldest man (969 years) for a wine that, at this size, crosses generations. In Bordeaux it’s called an Imperial — same volume, a nod to Napoleon III rather than the Old Testament.
Salmanazar
08
9 L · 12 bottles
Twelve bottles in a single vessel. Assyrian king, who deported the ten tribes of Israel. Two people to pour. Opening a Salmanazar is already an event — drinking it becomes a story.
Balthazar
09
12 L · 16 bottles
One of the three magi. 12 L of wine, roughly 20 kg once filled — it’s a piece of furniture, not a bottle. Almost exclusively champagne and Bordeaux grands crus, for vintages meant to cross half a century.
Nebuchadnezzar
10
15 L · 20 bottles
King of Babylon, builder of the Hanging Gardens. The showpiece format for cuvée anniversary nights. The bottle alone weighs 30 kg — it’s served resting on a stand, never held in the air.
Melchior (Solomon in Champagne)
11
18 L · 24 bottles
Second magi in Bordeaux, the name of the wise king in Champagne. Same volume, two traditions. From this format up, each house makes them to order: there is no standing stock of a Melchior.
Solomon (Primat in Champagne)
12
20 L · 27 bottles
King of Israel, son of David. Confidential, produced in a handful of copies per vintage by the grandes maisons. You don’t buy it: it gets opened because someone decided it was time.
Sovereign
13
26.25 L · 35 bottles
The largest standardised champagne format. Created for the opening of the Sheraton Sydney in 1988 — neither biblical nor royal, simply sovereign. Disgorged by hand, two people and a counter-top crane.
Chapter 03 · Questions
What we get asked.
Why age a wine in magnum rather than bottle?
Because a wine’s ageing depends on contact with the residual oxygen that enters at the cork and slowly dissolves into the wine. A magnum holds twice as much wine but barely more air under the cork: the air-to-wine ratio is halved. Oxidation slows, tannins polymerise more finely, secondary aromas have time to settle. A 20-year-old magnum tastes like a 15-year-old bottle.
Which format for a wedding or a large dinner?
For 30 to 40 guests, a Methuselah (6 L) gives a photogenic format without becoming unmanageable — pour it with two people, the bottle stays on the table. Beyond that, the Nebuchadnezzar (15 L) tips into scenography: you put it on a side table and serve from there. For a simple toast, nothing beats a Jeroboam: reasonable volume, memorable name.
Is wine really better in a large format?
Better, no. Different, yes. A large format ages more slowly, so it offers a later and wider tasting window. For a young wine meant to drink within five years, the classic bottle is enough. For long cellaring — great Bordeaux, vintage champagne, Barolo — the magnum changes the nature of the wine, not just its volume.
Why does a Bordeaux have square shoulders?
To catch sediment when serving an older wine that has rested on its side for decades. When you stand the bottle up before opening, the precipitated tannins lodge against the shoulder, not in the neck. Burgundy never had that need — its grapes (pinot noir, chardonnay) shed little sediment — hence the continuous curve. The geometry of each region answers a technical problem first, never an aesthetic one.
BonTox
Your cellar deserves a fair look at every flask.
BonTox is a personal wine library, made to be looked at. Photograph a wine and it joins your library — silhouette included.