Ullage, Explained: What a Wine's Fill Level Tells You, and What It Cannot

The line is small and it usually sits near the end of the lot description: "u. 2x5cm", or "ts", or nothing at all. It is the fill level, and in a wine auction catalogue it does more work than any other word in the entry. It is the one condition statement a specialist has measured rather than described, and it moves the estimate, the buyer pool and, years later, the resale of the same bottle.

Most guides stop at a chart. This is a guide to wine ullage from the catalogue side: what the gap actually is, how the two measuring systems work, what each house says a level means at a given age, in the houses' own words with the dates they were checked, and the questions the number cannot answer. If you have read how to buy fine wine at auction, this is the next layer down.

What ullage is, and why every old bottle has some

Ullage is the gap between the wine and the bottom of the cork. Zachys, the wine auction house, puts it plainly in its buyer guidance: "it's just a fancy word for how full a bottle is, or more accurately, the amount by which it falls short of being completely full." Sotheby's glossary files the same thing under "Ullages (Level of Wine)" and abbreviates it to a single letter, "u.", which tells you how routine the measurement is inside the trade.

The word is older than the bottle. It descends from the cellar practice of topping up casks, by way of the medieval French verb for filling a barrel to the brim, and it kept its sense when wine moved into glass: the space at the top that a cellar would once have filled.

Some of that space is there from the first day. A bottling line leaves a small headspace so the wine can expand as the temperature changes, and a cork is not a hermetic seal: over years a little wine is lost through it, so the level of a well-kept old bottle sits lower than the level of a young one, and a specialist reads the distance as a rough clock. Zachys states the young end of the scale directly: "Current vintage wines should have no, or negligible ullage", and "any wine younger than 1990 shouldn't have much ullage at all."

That is the whole logic of wine ullage in one sentence. A fill level is compared with the age of the wine, never judged on its own.

The two scales: shoulders for Bordeaux, centimetres for Burgundy

Bottles come in two shapes that matter here, and the trade measures them differently.

Bottles with defined shoulders

A Bordeaux bottle, and the Port and Cabernet bottles built on the same pattern, has a straight neck and a distinct shoulder, so the level is described by where it sits against that shape. Sotheby's publishes its interpretations in its wine glossary. The wording below is from the Sotheby's Wine glossary dated 2021, checked on 13 September 2026; the May 2022 edition of the buying guide repeats it, extended to spirits.

Two things about that table are easy to miss. First, Sotheby's scale stops at mid shoulder: the glossary has no entry for anything lower. Second, the top of the scale is often not printed at all. WineBid's auction terminology page, checked the same day, states the convention: "If no fill level is indicated, that means that it is at the base of the neck of the bottle or higher." Silence, in a catalogue, is a good level.

Below mid shoulder the vocabulary continues in other houses' usage: low shoulder, and below low shoulder. WineBid's entire description of low shoulder is one sentence, "This occurs in older wines", and Decanter, quoting Christie's guidance, records the trade view that a Bordeaux at low shoulder is "risky and usually only accepted for sale if wine or label exceptionally rare or interesting."

Bottles with sloping shoulders

Burgundy and German bottles, and the other sloping-shouldered shapes, have no shoulder to describe, so the level is measured instead. Sotheby's rule: "For Burgundy, German and other wines in bottles with sloping necks the ullage is indicated in centimetres, measured from the base of the cork." The catalogue entry "u. 2x5cm" therefore means that two bottles in the lot each stand five centimetres below the cork.

Here the reporting threshold matters more than the scale. Sotheby's states that it "does not indicate levels under 3 cm in the necks of the bottles inspected", and WineBid treats "Two centimeters or less" as "an excellent fill for any age" that "does not need to be mentioned". A Burgundy lot with no level given has not gone unmeasured; it sits inside the band the house considers unremarkable. The measurement point also changes with the wine. Zachys notes that for sparkling wine "measurements are taken in centimeters from the liquid to the bottom of the foil", because the cork itself is hidden.

Reading a level against the age of the wine

This is where the published guidance is most useful and least uniform. Each house draws its own line between normal and worth a question, and the lines do not coincide. Rather than average them into a chart that nobody publishes, here is what each source actually says, all checked on 13 September 2026:

Read the table for its shape rather than its numbers. The sources agree on the outline: neck and base of neck are unremarkable at any age, top shoulder is ordinary once a wine is past its mid-teens, and mid shoulder is where the language turns from description to caution. They diverge on exactly where "ordinary" ends, and that divergence is the point. A level printed in a catalogue means what that house's glossary says it means, so read the glossary of the house you are bidding with, not a chart from somewhere else.

The practical test is a mismatch in either direction. A twelve-year-old claret at mid shoulder has lost far more than its age explains, and the usual explanations are a failed cork or poor storage. A fifty-year-old claret sitting at base of neck has lost less than its age explains, and that needs explaining too.

What a fill level cannot tell you, and when a low one is the right buy

A level measures one thing: how much wine is in the bottle now. The trade uses it as a proxy for everything else, and it is a weaker proxy than the price differences suggest.

It cannot tell you how the bottle was stored. Two bottles at high shoulder can have arrived there by different roads, one through forty quiet years in a cold cellar and one through a hot summer in a garage, and the second has probably cooked while the first is probably fine. The capsule and cork say more about that than the level does: seepage, a raised or sunken cork, a stained capsule. Sotheby's own account of inspecting a large private cellar (Stephen Mould, March 2017) lists what its specialists noted bottle by bottle: "the ullage (level) of the wine – whether in or below the neck, the condition of the labels – whether perfect, or damaged or torn or soiled, and the capsule condition – whether corroded or damaged by the divider." Level is one item on that list, not the list. What good storage looks like from the owner's side is in how to store fine wine properly.

It cannot tell you whether the wine is sound. A low fill raises the probability of oxidation; it does not confirm it, and a bottle with a textbook level can still be flawed for reasons the outside never shows.

It cannot tell you when it was measured. Levels move, slowly, and an inspection note written when the consignment arrived describes the bottle then, not on the day of the sale. Ask the date.

And a level can be too good. Because wine leaves through the cork over decades, an old bottle should show some loss, and a bottle claiming great age with a fill sitting where a young wine's would sit is asking a question that needs answering. Sometimes the answer is benign: a bottle recorked and topped up at the property under its own supervision, which a house should state in the lot description. Sometimes it is not. Our guide to spotting counterfeit fine wine treats the fill as one of its signals, and the five documents that move the price sets out the paper trail that should accompany any such explanation.

What to ask before you bid

• The date of the inspection that produced the level, and whether the house measured it or took the consignor's word.
• A photograph of the bottle upright, in flat light, with the level visible against the shoulder or a ruler. Catalogue photography is composed to sell.
• The condition of the capsule and cork in the house's own words: any seepage, any sign the cork has moved.
• Storage history, and whether any of it can be verified by a third party rather than asserted by the seller. In bond versus duty paid explains why bonded storage records carry weight here.
• For sloping-shouldered bottles, the measurement point the house uses and its reporting threshold.
• Whether the estimate already reflects the level, which is a question about the total you will actually pay, not the hammer price.

Now the counter-argument, because the trade has one. A low fill on a genuinely rare bottle is not a defect to be avoided; it is a discount to be priced. The Christie's line quoted above says exactly that: a low-shoulder Bordeaux is accepted where "wine or label exceptionally rare or interesting". If you are buying a great old vintage for the collection rather than the glass, the level barely matters. If you are buying to drink within the year and the estimate admits the risk, a high-shoulder bottle of a serious wine can be the best value in the sale. What you should not do is pay a full-level price for a low level because the label was famous. And if you expect to sell again, remember that the next buyer will read the same line you did, which is why consignors are asked about levels before a house will take the wine.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good fill level for wine?

For a shouldered bottle, anything in the neck or at base of neck is unremarkable at any age, and the houses quoted here treat top shoulder as ordinary for a wine over 15 years old. For a sloping-shouldered bottle, a level inside the house's reporting threshold, 3 cm at Sotheby's, is not even printed. "Good" is always relative to the age of the wine.

Is wine ullage the same as fill level?

Yes. Ullage is the trade word for the empty space between the wine and the cork; fill level, or simply level, describes the same thing from the other direction. Sotheby's glossary carries both in a single entry, "ullage/ullages (levels)".

Why do Burgundy bottles use centimetres instead of shoulder terms?

Because a Burgundy bottle has no defined shoulder to describe. Sotheby's measures the ullage of "Burgundy, German and other wines in bottles with sloping necks" in centimetres from the base of the cork, so a lot described as "u. 2x5cm" holds two bottles each five centimetres down.

Can a low fill be fixed?

Not by the buyer. Where a bottle has been recorked and topped up at the property, the house should say so in the lot description. A bottle topped up by anyone else has been altered, and an old bottle with an unexpectedly high fill should be treated as a provenance question rather than a bargain.

Does a low fill mean the wine is spoiled?

No. It raises the probability of oxidation and lowers the price, which is why a rare bottle at high or mid shoulder can be worth buying when the estimate reflects the risk. It does not confirm a fault, and a full bottle does not rule one out. The wider problem of condition words that sound precise and are not is covered in what the condition words actually mean.

The short version

Wine ullage is read against age, in the vocabulary of the house that printed it. Neck and base of neck are silence; top shoulder is middle age; mid shoulder is a wine with decades behind it and a question attached; anything lower is a bottle you buy for the label, or at a price that admits the risk. And the fill that is too good for its age deserves more suspicion than the fill that is slightly poor.

The level is one line on a condition report. Before you bid on an old bottle, work through the rest of it with our provenance checker, which walks you through the questions that decide whether a collectible is safe to buy, and keep how to read an auction catalogue beside you for everything on the page that is not the number.