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No-Fuss Guide · No. 17

How many glasses are in a bottle of wine? Five, of 150 ml

A 750 ml bottle pours 5 glasses of 150 ml, the serving size most often used as a reference. Sparkling wine, served in smaller pours, gives 6. A half bottle gives two and a half; a magnum, ten. And the glass doesn't need to go up to the rim: the empty space is where the wine's aroma lives.

How many glasses in a bottle: 750 ml divided by the glass

The standard bottle holds 750 ml. In the European Union, it's one of the eight volumes in which still wine can be sold between 100 ml and 1.5 liters; in the United States, the sizes in milliliters, 750 included, have been required by law since 1979. The reference glass is 150 ml: it's the measure Wine Spectator and Wine Folly use (5 ounces, over there), and it gives 5 glasses per bottle.

But the glass changes from bar to bar, and the math changes with it:

Wine Folly says the 180 ml glass is the most common, but many restaurants prefer the 150 ml one to get 5 out of a bottle instead of 4. In the United Kingdom the law is clear: every licensed bar must offer wine in a 125 ml glass and say so on the menu, and the glass served has to be 125 ml, 175 ml or multiples of those.

Sparkling goes further

Sparkling wine goes in a smaller pour. Moët & Chandon counts 125 ml per flute, filled to about two thirds: a 750 ml bottle gives about 6 glasses, a magnum about 12 and a half bottle about 3. Canard-Duchêne, another Champagne house, talks about 6 to 8 glasses per bottle. And Port, which has more alcohol and goes in a small pour, gets up to 10 glasses per bottle, by Wine Folly's count.

Bottle sizes

• 187 ml (piccolo): the little single-glass bottle of sparkling wine.
• 375 ml, the half bottle: two and a half glasses of 150 ml, or three of sparkling.
• 750 ml, the bottle: 5 glasses of 150 ml.
• 1.5 liters, the magnum: two bottles, 10 glasses of 150 ml.
• In Champagne, the names keep going: jéroboam (3 liters), réhoboam (4.5), mathusalem (6), salmanazar (9), balthazar (12) and nabuchodonosor (15).

How full to pour

Riedel, which makes glasses, advises: red up to about a third, white up to about half, sparkling between half and two thirds. Wine Spectator's Dr. Vinny also says a third at most: it leaves room to swirl the wine without spilling and to put your nose in the glass. A 2015 Japanese study, which filmed the alcohol vapor rising from the glass, saw that, with the wine at 13 °C, a wine glass gathers that vapor in a ring near the rim and leaves the center freer for the aroma; with warmer wine, the ring disappears.

And the standard drink?

That's a different calculation, a health one, and it doesn't change the glass you're served. In 2024, Brazil's Ministry of Health adopted a standard drink of 10 g of pure alcohol. By its own technical note, a 150 ml glass of a 12.5% wine holds 14.8 g, that is, one and a half standard drinks; the whole bottle, about 7.4. If you want to count, that's it. And a glass of water between one glass of wine and the next is a good habit: hydration, no fuss.