Some weeks back I tried a red blend called Magic Box, and when it was gone and I rinsed the bottle for recycling, the bottle seemed awfully heavy compared to the multitudes of 750ml bottles I’ve handled down the years. The Magic Box wine was so-so and I probably won’t buy it again. But man, it took a lotta glass to get from their ships to my lips.
As if I didn’t have anything better to do, I started setting aside empty 750ml glass bottles, not only of wine but of San Pellegrino sparkling water and Torani sugar-free coffee syrup. After accumulating six bottles, I weighed them on our digital postal scale. It’s quite a spread:
- San Pellegrino sparkling water 15.6 oz
- Torani coffee syrup 1 lb 0.65 oz
- Radius red blend 1 lb 0.15 oz
- Saracco Moscato 1 lb 1.15 oz
- Menage a Trois Silk red blend 1 lb 7.95 oz
- Magic Box red blend 1 lb 13.25 oz
None of these bottles contained high-carbonation wine like champagne. The only one with any fizz at all was the Pellegrino sparkling water—and that was the lightweight of the bunch. Yes, yes, I know, there’s lots more fizz in champagne. Since I don’t like champagne I won’t be able to weigh a champagne bottle for comparison. If you have an empty champagne bottle and a postal scale, hey, weigh it and let us know in the comments.
Nor did I log prices per bottle. Keep in mind that I rarely pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine. So it was all cheap-ish wine, at least by sophisticated wine-fanatic standards. I have a glass of wine with dinner, and cook with it here and there. I don’t mull (heh) my wine, looking for hints of loamy forest floor or galvanized iron.
Nope. Just a stray thought that triggered a question that led to a simple experiment. I’ve done it before. I will do it again. Questions (even those without answers) are a goodly part of what makes life worthwhile.
Ounces and pounds? When comparing weights I find it vastly clearer (for myself at least) to go with decimalization. My kitchen scale is set to grams, but pounds with a decimal point work too.
At least you didn’t call them 25.3605 fluid ounce bottles. 😎
I just reported what my postal scale told me. It was the first scale we bought for Coriolis, which dates it way back to 1990. The manual has long since perished, and I looked closely to see if it has a setting for decimal pounds. No such luck. We don’t use it often enough to warrant getting a new one, so for now pounds and ounces (albeit decimal ounces) are the best I can do.
Perhaps a kitchen scale as a stocking stuffer this year. Mine is about $13 on Amazon. The most common use for me getting hamburgers the right size, which for me is 150 grams.
Sounds like the collection would have made for a good photo.