We often get asked some variation of, “how many glasses in a bottle of wine?”
And our response is always: “Do you want the short answer, or the long answer?”
Short answer? Five.
The long answer: it depends.
How many ml is a glass of wine?
First of all, let’s talk about units of alcohol versus serving sizes. This is the scientific bit behind the question of how many glasses are in a bottle of wine.
A unit of alcohol, according to the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, is 10g of pure alcohol, which is the amount of alcohol the average adult can process in an hour. ‘Processing’ means that within an hour there should be little to no alcohol left in the blood of an adult (this isn’t a hard and fast rule because it can vary from person to person).
Of course, when you’re drinking wine, you’re not drinking pure alcohol, so the number of standard units of alcohol in a glass of wine will depend on the percentage of alcohol in the wine itself.
So, for example, for a wine that has an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 13.5%, a single unit of alcohol is 93.75ml. If your wine has a higher ABV, a single unit will be smaller than that. If the wine is lower in alcohol, you’ll get more in your glass before you hit that single unit threshold.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pour drinks that are 93.75ml though, so a standard pour is usually 150ml (although this also can vary depending on the place doing the pouring).
The short answer above (five glasses of wine in a bottle) is based on five pours of 150ml, but it’s important to remember that this measure of a standard glass isn’t the same as a standard unit of alcohol.
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What size is a glass of wine?
As we mentioned above, a standard pour at a bar or restaurant is usually 150ml, but some will serve glasses that are 125ml, and some will offer a large glass option, which is 250ml.
When you’re at home, free-pouring wine, you could be serving much more than this. Which means you might only get three, or fewer, glasses from a bottle of wine.
The size of your pour might also be influenced by the size of your glass. If you’re pouring into a smaller glass, you’re likely to pour a smaller serve. If, like Betty White, you choose a glass that holds a whole bottle of wine, you’re unlikely to squeeze five glasses from a bottle.
In the end, the only way to ensure a perfect pour and get exactly five glasses of wine from your single bottle is to measure them out.
Or you could change the size of the bottle…
Wine bottle sizes
We told you there was a long answer!
The five glasses answer is based on a standard pour of 150ml from a standard bottle of wine, which is 750ml.
But we haven’t talked about Magnums, or Jeroboams, or Melchizedeks.
There are many different wine bottle sizes (the number varies, depending who you ask), ranging from 187.5ml to a whopping 30L. You’re likely to get a few more than five glasses out of one of those!
Chances are, you’re most likely to be drinking standard pours from standard bottles, so in the end we reckon five is a pretty solid answer to the question of how many glasses of wine you’ll get out of a bottle.
Looking for regular-sized bottles of wine? We have plenty!