The twenty-five sizes
On this page9
The large formats
3 litres, 2.25 litres, 1.8 litres and 1.5 litres. The magnum at 1.5 is the recognisable one; the rest are formats with specific trade or historical reasons behind them.
The standard bottle
750 mL, and 1 litre beside it. Seven-fifty is what the trade, the shelf and every price comparison organised around, which is a commercial fact rather than a regulatory one.
The half and the quarter
375 mL is the half bottle, a genuine product for a single diner or a dessert wine. 187 mL is the quarter, which is airline and single-serve territory.
The small end
250 mL, 200 mL, 100 mL and 50 mL. The 250 is a large glass in a can or a bottle and is where single-serve wine has grown, and the smaller ones are tasting and sampling formats.
Why there are so many
The same reason as spirits: a metric list reconciled with sizes the trade already used, across products that arrived from different places at different times.
The list stops at 3 litres
Which is the important structural difference from spirits, and the next page is about what happens above it.
It applies to what is in the container
A standard of fill is a fill, not a bottle size. A bottle sold as 750 mL has to actually hold and be filled to 750 mL with sensible headspace, which is a question about the specific glass rather than its name.
Keep the list next to the bottle catalogue
Twenty-five numbers on a card. It is the cheapest control in this craft and it prevents the costliest mistake, which is a mould or a case of glass at a size that may not be sold.