🍷 Salmanazar
Also known as: Salmanazar, Salmanazar bottle, 9 litre bottle, 9 l bottle, 900 cl bottle, twelve-bottle format
The Salmanazar is a large wine bottle of 9 litres, twelve standard bottles, named after Shalmaneser, a king of Assyria.
A Salmanazar is a wine bottle of 9 litres, twelve standard bottles in one. The Comité Champagne lists it after the 6-litre Methuselah and before the 12-litre Balthazar. For comparison, a magnum is two bottles and the Midas forty.
The name is borrowed from Assyria. Salmanazar is Shalmaneser, a king of Assyria who appears in the Bible. Nobody knows who first gave the name to a bottle. In print it turns up, along with Methuselah and Balthazar, in André Simon's Dictionary of Wine of 1935, according to World Wide Words.
The sources give no glass count for 9 litres. A rough guide: the biggest format in the Comité's list, the 30-litre Midas, equal to 40 bottles, holds around 240 glasses, while a Salmanazar is only twelve bottles.
The law has no place for it either. The annex to Directive 2007/45/EC stops at 1.5 litres. So the Salmanazar is a tradition of big champagne formats rather than a legal standard. Its neighbours are the Jeroboam and the Nebuchadnezzar, and the whole run is on Wine bottle sizes.
Facts
How it connects to Wine
🍷 Salmanazar → kind of → 🍷 Wine bottle sizes → kind of → 🍷 Wine bottle ← packed in ← 🍷 Wine
Links
- Part of
- 🍷 Wine bottle sizes
Frequently asked questions
How many bottles make a Salmanazar?
Twelve standard bottles, which is 9 litres, according to the Comité Champagne.
Who was Salmanazar?
The name is a form of Shalmaneser, an Assyrian king who appears in the Bible.
When did the name first appear?
In André Simon's Dictionary of Wine, 1935, together with Methuselah and Balthazar, according to World Wide Words.
Is it true that a Salmanazar is a legal EU bottle size?
No. Directive 2007/45/EC lists wine volumes only up to 1.5 litres.
What is bigger than a Salmanazar?
The Balthazar at 12 litres, then the Nebuchadnezzar at 15, up to the 30-litre Midas.
Similar
🍷 Half bottle (0.375 l) · 🍷 Jeroboam · 🍷 Methuselah · 🍷 Balthazar · 🍷 Nebuchadnezzar · 🍷 Magnum
Sources
- Comité Champagne. Factsheet Champagne Bottle Sizes
- World Wide Words. Names of large wine bottles (Q&A)
- Directive 2007/45/EC (nominal quantities for prepacked products), Annex: wine volumes