How Many Glasses of Wine Are in a Bottle? The Answer Might Surprise You
It's a more complicated question than you might think.
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We’ve all been there: The server comes to your table to pour the glass of wine you ordered and you think to yourself “$22 for that much? Really?!” While there are some guidelines to the size of a standard wine pour, different restaurants definitely pour different amounts per glass — and of course, at home, anything goes. All of this poses a complicated question: how many glasses of wine are there in one bottle?
A standard wine bottle contains 750 milliliters of liquid, which translates to 25.361 ounces. No surprise, then, that most people opening a bottle at home think there are basically four glasses of wine in it, while restaurant staff (and owners) tend to feel there are five. When the size of a pour affects your bottom line, you tend to stretch the bottle.
According to the United States government, namely the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (a subset of the NIH), a “standard serving” of wine is five ounces. This is for a wine with 12% ABV.
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Most people, though, are not measuring out their wine pours (and certainly not doing a complicated equation about ABV vs volume), and, since the shapes and sizes of wine glasses vary significantly, equal quantities of wine can look quite different depending on the glass. A five-ounce pour will look entirely reasonable in, say, Glassvin’s universal wine glass, which has a 16.9-ounce capacity; on the other hand, in their enormous Burgundy-style glass, whose large, rounded bowl holds 32.5 ounces (more than an entire bottle), five ounces looks like a tiny puddle on the bottom.
“There is always going to be a guest that questions a pour,” says Washington, D.C.-based sommelier Liz Martinez. “One thing I preach to my staff is consistency when it comes to wine pours. Managing guest expectations is super important, and we have to ensure that we’re honest and transparent in order to gain a guest’s trust and confidence.”
How big is a glass of wine?
For Martinez, who has spent years training restaurant staff on this very topic, the right amount to pour per glass remains subjective. “A lot of places do a five-ounce pour, or five glasses per bottle; others do six ounces, or 4 glasses,” she says. “I fall somewhere in between that, around 5.5 ounces.” We polled a few other wine professionals for their take:
Anthony Briactico, general manager and sommelier at New York’s Bottino, agrees with Martinez on the 5.5-ounce pour, which results in just over 4.5 glasses of wine per bottle.
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Others go for a straight five-ounce pour. “You can get five glasses per bottle with just a splash over,” says Brady Brown, wine director at BRASS and The Tusk Bar. Thomas Delasko, sommelier at Via Sophia in D.C., agrees.
The crowd-pleasing six-ounce pour can be found, too.
“We give a six-ounce pour for a glass of wine here in the tasting room at Sparkling Pointe,” says Michael Falcetta, general manager at Sparkling Point Vineyards & Winery on Long Island’s North Fork. And on a recent trip to visit family in Ohio, I was introduced to the glorious “pick your pour size” option at a local tavern that offered six-ounce or nine-ounce wine pours. Then there’s the classic “country club pour,” which is 8.45 ounces, or three glasses per bottle—evidently country club members enjoy their wine, and lots of it.
So there’s no hard-and-fast answer to how many glasses of wine are in a given bottle, but 4.5 ounces per glass splits the difference in standard restaurant pours. When popping a bottle at home, the amount of wine in your glass is entirely up to you. Or, just use a straw.
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