Why Magnums Should Be at All of Your Summer Parties
If your summer calendar looks like ours, it’s already quite booked with graduations, weddings, vacations, family reunions, and neighborhood potlucks. Great weather brings people together and makes us happy to be outside celebrating the big and small moments in life. Whether you’re hosting or a guest at your next social adventure, you’re likely contemplating what to serve or bring along. Let us make it easy for you: Serve or bring magnums of wine.
Why Magnums?
As either hosts or guests, we’ve all been serving or bringing bottles of wine for years…carefully chosen with the best of intentions. So, wait until you see the heads turn when magnums of your favorite varietals appear. Not only are they fun, but magnums are also memorable. That’s probably why they’re all the rage this year.
At 1.5 liters, a magnum is the same as two “regular” bottles of wine (750ml). That’s about 10 glasses, making them ideal for anything from an intimate dinner party of 4 to a backyard blast. Aside from the grandeur of the bottle itself, there are compelling reasons to buy, share, drink, and/or cellar magnums.
4 Reasons to Buy Magnums:
- You can be confident the wine is great. Sounds suspicious, right? But the fact is, magnums require a big process change for a winery: The bottles are custom-made. They are hand-bottled and hand-labeled. And they require special shipping cartons. So, when a winery decides to make magnums it’s because they love the wine going inside the bottle and they want to share it with you.
- The wine is closest to its final barrel tasting and will cellar longer. Magnums, while twice the size of a 750ml bottle, have the same sized closure. The space between the wine and the cork is called the ullage, and there’s less of it in a magnum than a 750ml bottle. Since the ratio of ullage to wine is smaller in a magnum, large-format wine matures (ages) more slowly, making it as close to the barrel as you’ll get from a first pour, and an even better choice for cellaring.
- They’re less hassle. If you’re the kind of pourer who gets fussy about what was already in the glass, magnums are for you. Fewer bottles mean more consistency across the wines. And speaking of fewer bottles, they also generate less trash.
- They really are more fun. Who are we kidding? Magnums feel swanky because they are swanky. They are great conversation starters and even better at keeping the party going. Even an empty magnum looks great on the table, and our Rosé magnums are particularly stunning and sleek.
Winemaker David Milner adds, “At Donelan, making magnums is truly a labor of love because every magnum is bottled, labeled, and wax-sealed by hand. For us, the extra work is worth it when we hear about the special memories they create for our customers.”
Ready to be the life of the party? CLICK HERE!