Origin of Champagne bottle names

[David Erickson]

Somebody asked me this yesterday and it's killin' me.

Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar, Nebuchadnezzar, Melchior: Yeah, we know who these guys are. We know the size they're associated with. But whose bright idea was it to use these names? The search engines don't know. Tom Stevenson doesn't know. Jancis doesn't know. Perhaps Monsieur Liem knows?

 

[Cole Kendall]

This should be knowable; French sites indicate the origins are "lost in the mist of times" but the modern wine bottle was only invented in the 1630s (who knew it was by an Englishman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenelm_Digby ) and presumably the bigger bottles only emerged later.

 

[kirk wallace]

"No one is exactly sure of the reasons why larger format bottles were given biblical names. But, according to the Champagne expert Francois Bonal, winemakers in Bordeaux had been using the name Jeroboam for the four-bottle size since 1725. (It's presumed they selected Jeroboam, the biblical founder of Israel, who ruled from 931-910 BC because he is referred to as "a man of great worth," as were the larger size bottles). Bonal also explains that a Champagne medieval poet, Eugene Destuche, mentioned several of these names in his poetry. The region of Champagne adopted the Jeroboam size and followed suit with larger format bottles developed in the 1940s, continuing the practice of selecting biblical kings and patriarchs."

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[David Erickson]

originally posted by kirk wallace:
this shows up in a few places"No one is exactly sure of the reasons why larger format bottles were given biblical names. But, according to the Champagne expert Francois Bonal, winemakers in Bordeaux had been using the name Jeroboam for the four-bottle size since 1725. (It's presumed they selected Jeroboam, the biblical founder of Israel, who ruled from 931-910 BC because he is referred to as "a man of great worth," as were the larger size bottles). Bonal also explains that a Champagne medieval poet, Eugene Destuche, mentioned several of these names in his poetry. The region of Champagne adopted the Jeroboam size and followed suit with larger format bottles developed in the 1940s, continuing the practice of selecting biblical kings and patriarchs."

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Thanks,Kirk. I'm guessing some Champenois who read a lot of Eugene Destuche in the 1940s picked up on the usage of "Jeroboam" and ran with it.