Will the 750ml wine bottle become extinct and be replaced with a 700 ml size?
Europe has taken the lead in reducing liquor bottle sizes down to 700 ml from 750 and have now become the norm for the majority of products I’m seeing.
Hope not.
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This has been the case for spirits in Europe since the early 90s. I’ve read different reasons for this: divisible by 25/35mL (which are the pour sizes), it allows for easier taxing/auditing.
You couldn’t even import 700 mL bottles of spirits into the US because of supposed consumer confusion (people thinking they were getting 750s) until recently. Though it probably had more to do with taxing calculations.
I’m not sure that rationale applies to wine. If it hasn’t happened yet, I doubt it will anytime soon.
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Why? I’ve not seen a new 700 ml wine bottle anywhere in my whole life.
There were different sizes of spirits bottles in Europe until 1990, when the EU standardized the sizes to 375, 700 and 1000 ml. These haven’t changed for 35 years, so there haven’t been any recent changes. Wine bottles are also standardized at 375, 500, 750 and 1000 ml for wines, so no changes in sight here, either.
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Hopefully not. Sounds like the ice cream trend. The container size gets smaller, but the price remains the same
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Europe already had the 700ml wine bottle standard prior to the current 750ml standard. The switch from 700ml to 750ml took place in the latter half of the 1970s I believe (?). In any case, I have neither seen nor heard any word of switching back.
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Sounds like more shrinkflation to me! Obama’s fault.
No we had not. There were no bottle size standards before they were standardized in the 1970’s, first in Europe, then the rest of the world.
Before the standardization most bottles were already 750 ml, although they ranged from 700 ml to rarely above 750 ml, up to even 800 ml. 700 ml bottles were quite common in the beginning of the 20th century, but were very becoming rare by the 1970’s. It was quite common to label bottles as 720 ml in Italy or 730 ml in France, but often even these cases the bottle actually contained 750 ml. However, there used to be some actually 720 ml or 730 ml sized bottles.
If you buy any pre-1970’s bottles, it’s easy to check out most of the bottles were 750 ml already then. Saying that there was a 700 ml standard for wine bottles in Europe is just untrue.
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Regular sake bottles are 720ml and magnums, called ishobin, are 1800ml. I don’t think we’ll see standardized sizes anytime soon.
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I’ve got a lot of old Barolo and Barbaresco, a lot of them are in 700ml, and a number in 720ml.
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I wasn’t aware there already have been 700/720 ml bottles of wine for years.
Tropicana orange juice, as others, started out with 64 ounce containers of OJ that went to 59 then 52 ounce sized. Tropicana in now pushing a new 46 ounce bottle.
I find it very annoying, and thought 750 ml bottles of wine might be next.
700 ml was a common size for German wines 50 or so years ago.
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Within the last year I have drunk 2016 Vin Jaune from Arbois from a 620ml bottle, which I believe is still the standard for that type of wine.
As an importer of both wine and spirits I haven’t heard about 700ml wine bottles. Spirits bottles in that size are now legal in the US, as has been pointed out above, which is a boon for us, as it’s the standard size for spirits in the EU.
I’ve had several 700ml bottles of old German Riesling up to most recently a 1970, but none since then. I think I may have an empty ‘66 or ‘67 on the small shelf of favorite empties.
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850 please.
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True, most German and Austrian wines in the 60ies and 70ies were 700 ml , I don’t know if it was an official standard or just practice. I have a lot of older bts like this.
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Yes, the clavelin bottle was a marketing gimmick that was in use long before the standardization of bottle sizes, so they were allowed to keep that 620 ml bottle size for Vins Jaunes as an exception when the bottle sizes were standardized. No other styles of wines are allowed to be bottled in a clavelin, but it is compulsory for a VJ to be bottled in one (although some producers secretly bottle small amounts of VJ that is exported into the US into 375 ml bottles, as 620 ml bottle sizes are not allowed in the land of the free).
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Leave it to Otto to set things (me) right! 
I have a 1975 700 ml bottle from the Mosel.