How much SHOULD a bottle weigh?

[Anton_D]

Weight should be limited such that a case of that wine will not trigger an airline surchage.

So, any given case of any given wine should weight less than 50 pounds.

A 750 of wine contains just under 27 ounces of wine. So, the wine weight of a case would be just a tidge under 20 pounds.

This U Line empty wine shipper weighs 3.35 pounds…so go with 4 pounds for the case holding the wine.

Wine Bottle Shippers - 12 Bottle Pack S-6518 - Uline

That leaves 24 pounds for bottles…so, 2 pounds maximum for the empty bottle with a cork and label; which gives us almost any sort of decorative or status signaling bottle we like.

[Anton_D]

I use a standard Bordeaux bottle that, when filled, comes in at about 3 pounds per bottle. I do very little retail, but when I have, the bottle looks like a little kid amongst the adults on the wine rack.

Personally, I don’t want to pay for the shipping of large bottles, and the extra cost and waste or the large bottles is troublesome.

The Black Cat bottles seem perfectly chosen for weight and not being crazy.

[cjsavino]

About half of a henweigh.

[lleichtman]

Enjoyed a Napa Cabernet this evening.
After pouring out the last glass, I noticed that the bottle felt a bit on the heavy side. Just for kicks, I put it on the scale (again, this is totally empty), and found that the bottle alone weighed 2 lbs. 4 oz.
This got me thinking, while this seems heavy, I really have no idea what the average bottle weighs. Furthermore, I’m sure there are pros and cons on both sides.
A thicker, heavier bottle (I would imagine) “feels“ more substantial, likely looks heftier, and might be more impressive to the consumer. Additionally, I’m sure there is some minimum thickness of the glass, below which breakage becomes a concern.
On the other hand, these heavier bottles cost more to ship (I would imagine), and of course use more resources. Larger bottles might also frustrate consumers in terms of being able to wedge them into standard cellar racking.
So, I am left wondering, is there some “industry standard“ as to how substantial a bottle should be? Are there issues or problems with lighter/thinner bottles? Aside from consumer perception, is there any reason that more lightweight bottles should not be used? Would love to hear the Board’s thoughts.

Try ordering from MO Ayoub. His bottles are really heavy and large.

[Neal.Mollen]

Unladen? European or African? Cuz it depends.

[JMReuter]

Here are a few empties that I happen to have on hand. From smallest to largest: 1978 Freemark Abbey Bosch, 1988 Grange, 2015 Maybach, 2014 Scarecrow, and 2014 SQN Syrah. My Eurocaves do not like the Maybach and larger bottles.

[Kevin_Lloyd]

Everyone sits around and complains about this ad nauseum, but I like the fact that they’re harder to break if you drop them. Give me a 10 lb bottle, who cares?! Pretty sure there are bigger issues in the world to discuss and solve…

pretty much the opposite of this. Giant bottles are bad for the environment and don’t fit well in wine fridges.

[Wes_Barton]

I don’t think you should discount price and availability. I was talking with a winemaker at a party a while back and I complemented them on their svelte wine bottles. They admitted that they are switching to heavier ones because in Napa the heavier ones are cheaper. Oh well.

Sounds like economics at play. Large winery accountants figuring in the higher shipping costs and concluding paying more for lighter bottles saves them a lot of money. More than enough to overcome the “prestige value” to shallow-minded shrinky-dink compensators.

[Wes_Barton]

My Eurocaves do not like the Maybach and larger bottles.

That’s one of several key points. These large bottles are a pain in the ass for customers. We can tolerate a certain number of these things, but that’s finite. That means, at some point we buy fewer of this sort of bottles than we otherwise would for such wines. We factor these in when making purchasing decisions and deciding which producers to drop when we cut back on our buying (which is a normal thing to do as you progress through phases of collecting). So, huge bottles may work great and even be part of the image and success for a limited number of wineries, it’s more likely to hurt sales for others. That can be a delayed mystery impact for some new latest-greatest producer, with sales tapering off from “list” customers a few years down the line, to an unusual degree.