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La Dolce Vita: Bigger, and maybe even better

I’m a big fan of large format wine bottles. Perhaps because the first one came as an unexpected gift from our sons...

I’m a big fan of large format wine bottles. Perhaps because the first one (at least the first one larger than a magnum, or 1.5 litre bottle) came as an unexpected gift from our sons.

They were both living in Calgary at the time and neither was rolling in money. But they somehow came up with $400 to give Angela and I a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. The vintage was 1997, one of the great years of the century for Brunello, and the size was five litres, the equivalent of nearly seven normal, 750ml bottles.

I researched and consulted with experts before concluding that the optimum time to drink the wine was probably 2007 or 2008. If that same wine had been in 750ml bottles, the time fame would have been bumped forward a year or two — wine ages more slowly in larger containers because proportionally less surface area is exposed to air, the key aging factor in wine.

In the years that the bottle sat in my cellar it provided a great source of conversation for fellow wine lovers, and there were no shortage of offers to accept an invitation when the bottle was eventually opened. From the get-go, though, I knew that we would use it as a fundraiser for Rotary and a dozen of us thoroughly enjoyed our evening of Italian food and what turned out to be a wonderful bottle of wine.

To be honest, it’s a little nerve-racking opening a large bottle before invited guests arrive. First, there was the challenge of scraping the hard was seal from around the cork — I eventually moved the production out to the carport because chips of wax were flying everywhere. The large cork came out cleanly and I carefully maneuvered the giant bottle to pour the contents into my collection of decanters so that the precious wine could aerate for a couple of hours before dinner.

In the years since, I’ve purchased several different large format bottles, mostly at fundraising auctions. They were all three-litre bottles, which are commonly referred to as double magnums. A more romantic term for that particular size is the Jeroboam, the smallest of five bottles named for biblical figures. The others are the Methuselah (eight bottles), the Salmanazar (12 bottles), the Balthazar (16 bottles) and the Nebuchadnezzar (20 bottles).

Interestingly, those definitions aren’t carved in stone, despite their historic references. Some references say that a sparkling wine Jeroboam holds three litres and a still wine Jeroboam holds 4.5 litres. That clears the way for the Rehoboam, which holds 4.5 litres of bubbly. It seems strange that the five-litre bottle doesn’t’ seem to have a name.

This particular subject has been on mind since we visited Coeur d’Alene recently to attend a Metropolitan Opera production that was shown live by satellite in movie theatres. We stopped in at Costco and, as always, I checked the wine selection. To my surprise, there is currently a variety of large format bottles on the shelves. The ones that caught my eye, though, were two five-litre offerings from Castello Banfi, which is located a stone’s throw from the Tuscan hill town Montalcino. From our stay in the area, I have a vivid memory of the long Lombardy poplar-lined road that leads visitors to the winery. The bottles were blends — one of Sangiovese, Carbernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the other of Sangiovese and Cab Sauv.

The former, called Centine, now rests in my cellar, awaiting another special occasion. It won’t require the same aging as a Brunello, so I’m thinking that our Christmas dinner at my sister’s home in Calgary, which always attracts a large group, might be just the opportunity.

Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.