Sip-Sized Delights: Exploring the World of Fun-Sized Wines

If you believed selecting a bottle of wine was challenging enough amidst an apparently infinite array of choices, just wait a few months. Things are about to get exciting. And by exciting, I mean fun-sized.

Until now in the United States, wine could only be sold in 187ml single servings (think airplane wine containers), 375ml half bottles, 500ml bottles, and the common 750ml bottle (plus of course magnums and all those large-size bottles named after obscure rulers and figures from the Bible).

Commencing January 10th, however, wine will now be permissible to sell in the additionally outlined volumes:

• 180ml
• 300ml
• 330ml
• 360ml
• 473 ml (16 oz.)
• 550 ml
• 568 ml (19.2 oz)
• 600 ml
• 620 ml
• 700 ml
• 720 ml
• 1.8 L
• 2.25 L

That’s correct. It’s soon going to be the Wild West of wine containers. Need a tiny little bottle of wine that fits in a clutch you’re bringing to the symphony? You’ll be able to purchase it. Can’t finish half a bottle of wine by yourself but think you require more than a single serving? There’s a bottle available for that.

They’ll be adorable. They’ll be functional. They’ll come in trendy little six-packs like beer. They’ll be jewel-like and nestled into small velvet boxes because you might not afford 750ml of that popular Cabernet, but you just might be able to spring for 300ml of it.

It remains to be determined how many of these fill sizes the industry will utilize. The largest wine corporations (consider Gallo, Bronco, Constellation, Treasury, etc.) who distribute their products everywhere from kiosks to corner liquor shops to supermarkets will likely be among the first to adopt these new formats. That is, just as soon as analysts conduct focus groups to gauge where the intersections of cost, marketability, shelf space, and consumer attraction lie. Or perhaps just as quickly as brand managers receive permission to experiment and discover what is effective.

I, for one, embrace the decline of the 750ml dominance that has persisted for so long. Of course, that’s as probable as the wine industry universally shifting to screwcaps. But this new regulation will signify greater diversity in wine packaging in America, and I believe that’s probably more beneficial than detrimental, with variety being the spice of life and all.

You can’t see it, but I’m lifting my tiny little bottle in a toast to you and your new realm of bottle selections!