Balthazar has a lot of bottle
Half-bottles are the bane of wine bottlers' lives. It doesn't matter that restaurants love them; for most producers they are still an unwelcome inconvenience. OK, so they speed up the ageing process a notch - there is more oxygen per centilitre of wine, since the bottle neck (and ullage) is the same as for a regular bottle. But they are the perfect response to the current trend for drinking less but better-quality, and they have such food-pairing potential, especially in situations where the choice of wines offered by the glass is somewhat limited.
Then there's the magnum. Equivalent to two bottles, it's widely regarded as being the ideal size for bottle ageing. It's large enough to slow the ageing process, but not so big that you can't lift the thing - or that you'll damage your wallet.
So what about the Nebuchadnezzar? This 20-bottle monster takes a team of muscled men to pour out your glass. They're a pig to age, too. But they're also a crowd-puller, says Austrian hotelier Florian Werner, who has 340 of them - his Arlberg Hospiz hotel in St Christoph, Austria, claims to have the largest collection of large-format bottles in Europe.
How large does large get, exactly? The Nebuchadnezzar is the biggest, followed by the Balthazar with 16 bottles, Salmanazar at 12 bottles, Methuselah (known as an Imperiale in Bordeaux) at eight bottles and a Rehoboam (known as a Jeroboam in Bordeaux) at six bottles. Then there's the Jeroboam at four bottles (in Burgundy and the Champagne region, though it's known as a double magnum in Bordeaux), a Marie-Jeanne at three bottles (Bordeaux only) and a magnum at two bottles.
Collectors of Bordeaux particularly like the larger bottle. Wine ageing might be agonisingly slow - Werner reckons he'll be in his 70s (he's in his 30s now) by the time the Nebs and Balthazars are ready to drink - but it's a gentler, more subtle ageing process, he says. "And my guests just love them," he adds, claiming that the Jeroboam is his biggest seller - he has 680 of them.
The Relais & Châteaux member also reckons that its large-format cellar, built in 1386, is a magnet for many guests and diners, many of whom request a tour. The hotel also holds regular wine tastings from €100 (£70) per head - depending on the wines being tasted.
Collector's dream
About 90% of the wines in the hotel's cellar are from Bordeaux, and the list is a collector's dream: from Cheval Blanc, Ducru-Beaucaillou and Haut-Brion to Lynch-Bages, Palmer and d'Yquem (their oldest wine is an 1865 Château d'Yquem).
It was Werner's 65-year-old father, Adolf, who started the big-bottle thing back in 1981, when he persuaded Château Haut-Marbuzet to bottle six Methuselahs for him.
"He's the real wine obsessive," says Werner. "He reads all the books and visits Bordeaux once a year. And he knows when a wine is too expensive. We don't go crazy on our wine mark-ups."
The biggest wine event on the Arlberg Hospiz hotel calendar is the Ski & Wine week, which takes place every January. Werner and his team open up some of these big boys for a tasting extravaganza, with food to match from the hotel's chef, Klaus Lettner. Also invited are some of the top Bordeaux producers, who created the large bottles especially for the Werner family.
Shorts
Festival fever The Oxford Wine & Food Festival will take place on 14-15 November at the city's Saïd Business School and promises to be a fun-packed event. Wine highlights include "The secrets of the perfect serve" from Rocco Forte Hotels wine buyer and whiz sommelier David Harvey, plus the lowdown on successful blind tasting with Michael Palij MW, and the "Emerging terroirs of South America" by Errázuriz's Eduardo Chadwick. Food highlights include Raymond Blanc discussing his kitchen garden, and a debate on restaurant and wine criticism with Jancis Robinson and husband, Nick Lander, the Financial Times restaurant critic. For details check out www.owff.co.uk. Tickets are £195.
Wine quiz
Test your wine knowledge at the second Torres Quiz Master, which takes place on Monday 24 November at London's Great Eastern hotel, in conjunction with the Academy of Food & Wine Service, Matthew Clark and John E Fells & Sons. The wine contest is open to all members of the on-trade working in the UK and includes a live knockout question round devised by Gerard Basset MW. Six semifinalists then move on to the aroma assessment and blind tasting, with three finalists taking part in a quick-fire quiz to establish a winner. Last year's winner was the Great Eastern's Loïc Maillet, with semifinalists Pierre Rabaste, of the former Che restaurant in London, and Rachel Pacquelet of Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons, near Oxford. To enter, contact James Brown at the Academy of Food & Wine Service on 020 8943 1011 or e-mail jamesbrown@acfws.org.
