A standard 750ml bottle of wine holds six glasses at the 125ml measure poured in most South African restaurants. At the American five-ounce pour of roughly 150ml it is five glasses, and at a generous home pour of 175ml it is a little over four.
Search the question and you will mostly be told five, because most of the internet answering it is American. Both numbers are right in their own country. Ours is six.
How many glasses in a bottle of wine, by pour size
| Pour | Glasses from a 750ml bottle | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| 125ml | 6 | The standard South African restaurant measure |
| 150ml | 5 | The American five-ounce pour |
| 175ml | 4, with a little over | A large glass, common in the UK |
| 250ml | 3 | A third of a bottle, sold as a carafe |
If you are pouring at home, you are almost certainly pouring more than 125ml. Most wine glasses made in the last twenty years are far larger than the measure they are meant to hold, and a comfortable-looking pour in a big glass is closer to 175ml. Four generous glasses from a bottle is the honest home number.
What a glass of our wine actually costs
This is the figure nobody publishes, and it is the one that makes a farm price make sense. Six glasses to a bottle, so take the per-bottle price and divide by six.
| Wine | Per bottle | Per 125ml glass |
|---|---|---|
| Blended White | R120.00 | R20.00 |
| Sauvignon Blanc | R121.67 | R20.28 |
| Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot | R121.67 | R20.28 |
| Chardonnay | R170.00 | R28.33 |
| Cabernet Sauvignon | R195.00 | R32.50 |
| Kottabos range | R210.00 | R35.00 |
| Syrah | R300.00 | R50.00 |
| Conclusion | R480.00 | R80.00 |
Per-bottle prices are ours when bought as a case of six, as at September 2026, and are subject to change. The figure on each product page is always the current one.
Put that next to a restaurant wine list and the arithmetic does the arguing. A glass of our Syrah at a table costs what most of this range costs by the bottle.
How many bottles do you actually need?
Work backwards from glasses rather than forwards from bottles. Two to three glasses a person across an evening is a realistic figure for a dinner, and it is the number most hosts under-estimate.
- Dinner for four: about ten glasses, so two bottles.
- Dinner for six: about eighteen glasses, so three bottles.
- Dinner for eight: about twenty-four glasses, so four bottles.
- A long lunch, where the wine is the afternoon rather than the accompaniment, add half a bottle a head.
Our case is six bottles of one wine, which is thirty-six glasses at 125ml. That is two dinners for six with wine left over, or one very good Sunday. If the number six seems an odd size for a case, we have written about why we sell by the six rather than by the twelve.
Other bottle sizes
| Format | Volume | Glasses at 125ml |
|---|---|---|
| Half bottle | 375ml | 3 |
| Standard | 750ml | 6 |
| Magnum | 1.5 litres | 12 |
| Double magnum | 3 litres | 24 |
A magnum is the format worth understanding properly, because it does not only hold more wine. It also ages more slowly than the same wine in a standard bottle, for a reason that has nothing to do with the glass. That is explained here.
Does the wine change how much you pour?
In practice, yes, though the bottle holds the same 750ml either way.
A crisp white on a hot afternoon empties faster than a structured red over a long dinner. A wine served with food goes further than a wine served on its own. And a bottle you have decanted tends to be poured more slowly, because people go back to it as it changes rather than finishing the glass in front of them.
A worked example, for a table of six
Six people, one dinner, two to three glasses each is roughly eighteen glasses, so three bottles. Make one of them white and two of them red and nobody goes without.
Three bottles of our Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot is eighteen glasses at R20.28 a glass, so R365 for the wine for the whole table. Three of the Syrah is the same eighteen glasses at R50, so R900. Either is a decision you can now make on the number rather than on the label. The range is on one page, with the per-bottle price on every wine.