Wine & Champagne Bottle Size Name Comparator
Large-format wine and Champagne bottles are named after biblical kings — Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah — but the words were adopted independently by two traditions that never agreed on the numbers. We fetched a Champagne specialist's own chart and a Bordeaux château's own chart directly and compared them name by name. Most agree. One doesn't, and it's the one people actually shop for.
The same word, two different bottles
Millésima's own page states the Champagne
convention: "Jeroboam: 3 liters ... equivalent to 4 wine bottles."
Château Rioublanc's own page states the Bordeaux
still-wine convention: "Jéroboam | 5 liters." A Bordeaux Jeroboam holds 66.7% more wine than a
Champagne Jeroboam — for the exact same name. Pick a name below to see what it means in each
convention, and whether the two even agree.
Every named size, both conventions, side by side
| Liters | Std. bottles | Champagne convention | Bordeaux (still wine) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 L | 2.00 | Magnum | Magnum |
| 3.0 L | 4.00 | Jeroboam | Double-Magnum |
| 4.5 L | 6.00 | Rehoboam | Réhoboam |
| 5.0 L | 6.67 | no name at this exact volume | Jeroboam |
| 6.0 L | 8.00 | Methuselah / Mathusalem | Impériale |
| 9.0 L | 12.00 | Salmanazar | Salmanazar |
| 12.0 L | 16.00 | Balthazar | Balthazar |
| 15.0 L | 20.00 | Nebuchadnezzar | Nabuchodonosor |
| 18.0 L | 24.00 | Solomon | Melchior / Salomon |
| 27.0 L | 36.00 | Primat / Goliath | no name at this exact volume |
| 30.0 L | 40.00 | Melchizedek | Melchizedek |
What this does not do
- It compares one Champagne-side source and one Bordeaux-side source, the two we could fetch and confirm directly with a full numeric chart. It does not cover Burgundy, the Rhône, or any other still-wine region by name — some guides claim Burgundy and the Rhône follow the Champagne convention, but no direct fetch of an official Burgundy or Rhône source confirmed that this session, so this page makes no claim about them.
- Millésima's own page also lists "Imperial" as a loose synonym for its Champagne-convention 6L Methuselah/Mathusalem row. We treat "Impériale" as the Bordeaux-side name here, per Château Rioublanc's own page, since that's the region where it's the primary term — but the boundary between the two conventions isn't perfectly clean at this one size, and Millésima's own page is evidence of that.
- It states what each named source's own page calls a given volume, not what any individual producer chooses to print on a specific bottle. A named Champagne house's own retail listing was not directly fetchable this session (see the header comment for the fetch attempts and why); this page relies on Millésima's and Comité Champagne's own charts instead.
- It does not tell you which size to buy — only what the word on the label actually means, and where.