Why You Should Buy Your Wine in Magnums
Size matters.
By Erin Henderson
A friend recently threw a pool party. I brought a magnum of rosé.
Plunked pool side in a (gigantic) bucket of ice, the pink liquid glittering like a JLo diamond in the sun, it was an impressive sight to behold.
Of course, other guests had seen magnums before, but no one at this summer shindig had ever partaken. My magnum became my magnum opus, as titillated friends wandered over to admire its commanding presence, even take selfies with it for Instagram.
Like seeing a rare sports car drive down your street, or an Oscar statue on display in the bathroom, a magnum of wine offers an intriguing mix of power, majesty, and resplendent frivolity. It’s the X-factor at your backyard barbecue.
But other than showmanship (which is enough reason, as far as I’m concerned), there are very real arguments for purchasing your wines in these impressively sized bottles.
A magnum is 1,500 millilitres, or 1½ litres, or 50.72 ounces. It’s double the size of a so-called normal wine bottle.
Special Order
When wineries decide to put a wine in a double-sized bottle, it’s not as simple as heading to the storeroom and filling one up. This isn’t Starbucks pushing out Ventis during the morning rush.
The magnums need to be custom-made (which is especially hard these supply-chain challenged days), bottling lines need to be adjusted, the cardboard cases for shipping need to be special ordered, as do the size of the labels, and the machinery that sticks them on.
It’s no small feat, so if a winery is going through the annoying process to make it happen, you can bet that wine is pretty good.
Let’s Talk Ullage and Aging
While “ullage” seems like it should be a private discussion between you and your gynecologist, the word actually means the bit of air that’s trapped in the neck of the bottle between the cork and the wine.
As I always tell my wine students, a little bit of air is a friend of wine: it’s why we decant and swirl, oxygen allows a wine to open up and express its best self. But, a lot of air will degrade a wine, breaking it down and aging it prematurely.
When wines are sealed under cork, part of the beauty for long-term cellaring is that micro-amounts of air get through that cork, allowing it to develop slowly over time, building complexity.
Magnums, while twice the size of a standard bottle, have the same sized closures. This means there is less surface-wine-to-air ratio. Ergo, less wine exposed to air, thus leaving for slower evolution of the wine.
TL;DR
Your wine ages slower magnums.
More Bang for Your Bottle
But let’s say you’re the only person on the planet who doesn’t have a wood-panelled, humidity controlled, low-lit, swanky cellar designed for storing massive bottles to taste fresh a century from now. Huh. Weird.
It just makes sense to buy magnums for your parties. The ones you’re throwing now. Here’s why.
At 50 ounces in a bottle, you should get a little more than eight, mid-sized glasses of wine from a magnum. (There are articles out there that actually have the gall to suggest as much as 20 glasses, which literally made me LOL, as that would equal 2½ ounce pours, and no one would accept an invitation to your cheap party again.)
We here at The Wine Sisters live and party by the ethos of easy, elegant entertaining. Just like we encourage big batch cocktails for throwing a bash, we ask, why open two bottles of wine, when you can open one – and do it in such dramatic flair as a magnum?
Magnums. Impressive, intriguing, and just enough pretense to make you feel like a true baller. Oh – and they’re better for wine, too. I rest my (specially ordered wine) case.