Sometimes Size Does Matter

"Uncle" Stirls retired from his job is the liquor industry a few weeks ago. Among the farewell presents he received were many bottles of good wine and a few came in magnums ie. 1500mL or the equivalent of 2 standard bottles.
The bigger the bottle the better the wine is supposed to age. The proportion of air in the ullage space to the volume of wine is lower in bigger bottles. Ageing is therefore slower.
He brought down a magnum of Lawsons 1999 Padthaway Shiraz for us to share.
A nice soft fruity and spicy wine, quite high in alcohol (14%), that went great with our pepper steak.
The magnum got me thinking about the bottle sizes that wine comes in and off the top of my head I could think of about five, especially when it came to champagne.
But when I did some research I found there were a lot more.

Volume (litres).....................Bottle
........0.1875 ...................................Piccolo
........0.25.......................................Chopine
........0.375......................................Demi
........0.378......................................Tenth
........0.5.........................................Jennie
........0.620......................................Clavelin
.......0.750.....................................Standard
........0.757......................................Fifth
.........1.5........................................Magnum
.........2.25......................................Maree Jeanne
.........3.0........................................Jeroboam
.........4.5........................................Rehoboam
.........5.0........................................Franzia
.........6.0........................................Imperial or Methuselah
.........9.0........................................Mordechai
.......12.0........................................Balthazar
.......15.0........................................Nebuchadnezzar
.......18.0........................................Melchior
.......20.0........................................Solomon
.......25.0........................................Sovereign
.......27.0........................................Primat
.......30.0........................................Melchizedek

Bottles also come in different shapes and colours which can help identify the wine style and region (mostly in Europe) of the wine. But that is maybe a subject for another post.