You know the ones on the back bar, the 10 gallon bottle of Ketel One and what not. Do those actaully contain alcohol, or are they full of water and just for display purposes?
I’ve never seen such a thing for a liquor brand. Display bottles of wine or champagne are often filled properly (well, “often” might be putting it strongly), but most oversized liquor bottles in my experience were just inflatables.
I’ve seen them. I’m not sure if it’s real or not. On one hand, that would be really expensive to have as decoration. OTOH, (assuming nothing was changed on the label) there are very strict laws when it comes to alcohol (at least in Wisconsin), one of the laws basically says that the liquor on the label has to be the sames as the liquor in the bottle. So I KNOW they could get in trouble for filling it with another brand of liquor, and I assume they could get in trouble for filling it with water as well. But, if it’s a novelty, and the label was changed to represent what the bottle really was filled with, then maybe.
I’ll see if I can dig up a cite on that.
Now that I think about it, I could see a Ketel One rep giving an giant empty bottle away as a promotional item, and letting the bar owner do what he/she chooses with it.
http://www.ci.middleton.wi.us/Clerk/Forms/Pub_302_Alcohol_Beverage_Laws.pdf (PDF)
Page 4
Section XI(a)
“It is illegal to refill any liquor bottle; you may not
pour any substance into a liquor bottle, even the
same brand of liquor.”
If the oversize bottle has tax stamps on the neck or lid, it surely had or has booze in it. Absence of the stamps doesn’t necessarily mean no booze. The bartender might have taken them off. For that matter :smack: , you could ask the bartender if the big bottle is for real.
I have an old 1 gal. US bottle that originally held Canadian Club whiskey. It has two tax strips crossed over the stopper, and four additional stickers on the shoulder of the bottle.
They contain water, coloured if necessary.
We have huge bottles of liquor here called Texas Mickeys that contain about 3 litres of booze. Picture here: http://brnation.d2sector.net/images/10-31-04-mcclounie-halloween/SatOct31_Mcclounie-Halloween%20028-L.jpg
They’re usually drunk and then used for loose change, afaik.
We have a couple in my restaurant/bar. (One is a giant Ketel One bottle, I think there is a Bombay Sapphire one, and something else.) They are not filled with anything, and they are purely decoration (they came that way and never were filled with anything).
Thanks Rigamarole for the answer to what I was looking for. Now as to these Texas Mickeys - My Google Fu is weak today. Can anyone find these for sale on the net?
They do make legit huge wine bottles and they are in standard sizes. Here is the list of standard sizes. A Nebuchadnezzar is the size of 20 standard bottles.
My best guess is that you’d have to get someone to send it to you and/or import it. They’re only sold in Canada, and I’m not sure on the overboarder liquor laws.
Some relations won a really big bottle of champagne (Balthasar, I think). As they were carrying home, the bottom fell off. 
How about those giant perfume bottles one sees in perfumeries and department stores? Are those filled with perfume or just coloured water?
Many wineries in this area, my employer included, do a mix of ‘dummy bottles’ and actual product.
For dummy bottles of red wine, the bottles are either empty and it’s obvious they are empty, or the insides of the bottles are blackened, making them appear to be filled with wine. For dummy bottles of whites, they are left empty.
At one point some bottles were filled with water and a special back label stating so was applied, but my employer did away with that practice. Some wineries might still be doing it.
We do a pretty generous amount of large format bottles (1.5L, 3L, 5L, 6L, 9L and an occasional 12L), probably over 10,000 a year, most of which are filled with actual product.
You can buy huge (2l and 4l) bottles of Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam here- they’re very expensive, but they come with a cradle that allows the jug/bottle to be tipped for pouring without actually having to lift it, if that makes sense.
A while back my roomate bought one. Filled with real Seagram’s whiskey. It came with a pump top to facilitate pouring.
20 Gallons is a crazy amount. I’ve never seen one that big. But on the other hand, when I worked as a barman, we had bottles of about 5 liters for whiskeys etc. We had a 5L Jameson bottle. Our boss would refill them with smaller bottles of Jameson. Usually this would take place on the bar during the daytime. It’s not illegal here, but it’s always nice to have a bit of transparency with things.
I wonder, do they still use those tax strips? I can’t remember opening a bottle in a VERY long time that had one, but some old bottles from my parent’s basement had them. (Probably purchases from the 70s or 80s.)
Does it vary by state? I’m near 100% certain that they aren’t used in NH/MA.