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Big bottles get a bad rap. Maybe it's the jug-wine connotation, or the fact most large-format wine containers today are plastic bladders in cardboard boxes. Maybe it's the sinister implication: an intent to overindulge.

Every year around this time, liquor stores - the ones with ample floor space - start carting out the heavy artillery, the two-bottle magnums, the double-magnums and the five-litre behemoths.

People must be buying them, yet one never sees them at dinner parties, where they belong. The only venues where I seem to encounter oversized bottles are at overpriced restaurants, where they're displayed inside the entrance as a form of Pavlovian conditioning. "Golly, is it hot in here or am I just suddenly developing a thirst for ludicrously marked-up merlot?"

I suspect most shoppers consider such imposing vessels to be little more than promotional props, wine culture's equivalent to inflatable Bud cans at spring-break beach parties.

Not so. Large-format bottles - or grands formats as they are known in France - are coveted by collectors for good reason. Wine in large containers ages more slowly and gracefully than in small. Ask any high-school student to Google it for you. Physical contact with air accelerates a wine's maturation. Big bottles, despite their overall girth, have relatively narrow necks, so there's a lower oxygen-to-liquid ratio between the air pocket under the cork and the wine inside than in a standard 750-millilitre container.

Still unclear? Think of it this way: If you leave open the front door of a large house in February, it will take longer for the place to get cold than it would for a log cabin if you did the same thing. Large bottles also have more liquid mass, so they're more resistant to temperature fluctuations. And they have the advantage of being rare, so they can fetch more at auction.

Many of the world's best wineries produce a small quantity of large-format bottles, either for special customers or for their own cellars. These run from the most common, a magnum, through to my rarely encountered favourite, the 34-bottle sovereign.

Unless you're studying for a sommelier exam, it's futile to memorize all the other format names because even rival regions within France are inconsistent about nomenclature.

A double magnum, for example, is equivalent to four bottles in Bordeaux, but in Burgundy and Champagne, it's called a jeroboam. A jeroboam in Bordeaux, conversely, contains 4.5 bottles, which is the volume of a rehoboam in Burgundy and Champagne. Confused? All I can say is you should be glad I'm not explaining German wine-labelling laws.

Curiously, and perhaps mercifully, one of the most popular big sizes today, the five-litre bottle, has no special name at all. I call it a turkey baster, because that's how much wine it takes 12 people to wash down a whole turkey.

My second-favourite large format is the German magnum, or magnumflasche, a double-bottle version of the tall, narrow, Blue-Nun-style flutes used in Germany and the Alsace region of France. It looks like an Apollo rocket ready for takeoff, or an anti-aircraft artillery casing. That pervert Freud might have seen it differently.

Since most German and Alsatian wines are white, you'll have to make major modifications to your fridge shelves to accommodate one. Better still at this time of year, leave it outside on the porch.

While many restaurants in Canadian cities display big bottles merely as props, sophisticated foreign establishments - notably the better wine bars of Paris and Napa Valley, for example - will regularly uncork old double magnums or methuselahs (that's eight bottles) and serve them by the glass as a special promotion throughout the day. Very smart, very sophisticated and very fun.

One oddball in the large-format firmament is champagne. It can cut both ways in the sophistication department because big champagne bottles are regularly displayed in tacky public stunts where the wine is sacrilegiously wasted, as in frothy Formula One podium ceremonies and sweaty Grey Cup locker-room parties.

Worse, uncouth diplomats, royals and celebrities through the ages have been invited to smash them against the hulls of ships, which is just one of many reasons I find it hard to watch History Television.

My favourite big-bottle-o-bubbly scene was on television, though. Remember Dallas, starring Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy? Bobby Ewing, played by Mr. Duffy, shows up at a woman's front door for an intimate dinner. What is he packing? A bouquet of flowers and what appears to be a cellophane-wrapped magnum of Roederer Cristal, worth about $500 today. That's the equivalent of two bottles of wine for two people who barely know each other. Hey, it's Texas, after all. Excessive, perhaps, but Bobby had the right idea. The best thing about big bottles, I think, has nothing to do with air-to-liquid ratios or high resale values. It has to do with the gesture they represent. Big bottles imply abundance and generosity, especially when uncorked for a dinner party.

Here's a shrewd entertaining hint: Big bottles also never fail to make an impression, regardless how much or how little you spent a litre. Though you should avoid anything with a screw cap or jug handle.

And if you want to make the ultimate impression, you can head to one of five B.C. liquor stores currently stocking one five-litre bottle each of Château Mouton Rothschild 2000 (http://www.bcliquorstores.com). At $6,500, it may seem steep. But 2000 was a stunning vintage in Bordeaux. And if you store this cellar-worthy monster properly, by the time it's ready to drink - say, 2080 - your grandchildren will get to brag about how little their family paid for it back in 2007 at one of those long-defunct government liquor stores.

Tasting notes

Osoyoos Larose 2004

(1.5 litres, $85; British Columbia No. 402578). Excellent Bordeaux-style red from the Okanagan. Elegant weave of cassis, herbs and minerals. Serve with roast beef or poultry. d'Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz 2004 (1.5 litres, $119.95; Ontario No. 037283). Big is the operative word. Aussie classic, packed black-skinned fruit and integrated tannins. Unleash it on rare lamb. Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 (1.5-litres, $149.95; Ontario No. 036921). Classic Napa cab flavours from a highly regarded producer. Ripe, with notes of plum, prune and cassis, with balancing acidity. Roast beef.Pahlmeyer Merlot 2003

(1.5 litres, $259; Ontario No. 050955). Top-flight merlot from Napa. Rich with flavours of blackberry, cherry, chocolate and coffee. Dynamite with duck. Leonardo Chianti 2005

(5 litres, $99.95; Ontario No. 661116). Cheerful, uncomplicated Tuscan red at a good price. Fine for pizza or pasta.Tenuta Santa Anna Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 (five litres, $149.95; Ontario No. 600080). Lighter-bodied, crisp red from the Veneto region of Italy. Chug with antipasto, sausages or pasta. Château Ducla 2005

(five litres, $154.75, Ontario No. 600288). Light red Bordeaux worthy of roast beef or lamb. Château de Beaucastel 2005 (1.5 litres, $183.33, Newfoundland No. 6805). Famous big red from the Rhône. Good with pork roast. Château Léoville Poyferré 2004 (1.5 litres, $212.34; Newfoundland No. 7480). Classy red Bordeaux. Serve with roast beef or lay it down for 15 years.

Beppi Crosariol