Shapes
Wine producers in Portugal, Italy, Spain, France and Germany follow the tradition of their local areas in choosing the shape of bottle most appropriate for their wine.
- Port, sherry, and Bordeaux varieties: straight-sided and high-shouldered with a pronounced punt. Port and sherry bottles may have a bulbous neck to collect any residue.
- Burgundies and Rhône varieties: tall bottles with sloping shoulders and a smaller punt.
- Schlegel variety, predominantly used in German wine growing regions: similar to Burgundy bottles, but more slender and elongated.
- Rhine (also known as hock or hoch), Mosel, and Alsace varieties: narrow and tall with little or no punt.
- Champagne and other sparkling wines: thick-walled and wide with a pronounced punt and sloping shoulders.
- German wines from Franconia: the Bocksbeutel bottle.
- The Chianti and some other Italian wines: the fiasco, a round-bottomed flask encased in a straw basket. This is more often used for everyday table wines; many of the higher-grade Chianti producers have switched to Bordeaux-type bottles.
Many North and South American, South African, and Australasian wine producers select the bottle shape with which they wish to associate their wines. For instance, a producer who believes his wine is similar to Burgundy may choose to bottle his wine in Burgundy-style bottles.
Other producers (both in and out of Europe) have chosen idiosyncratic bottle styles for marketing purposes. Pere-Anselme markets its Châteauneuf-du-Pape in bottles that appear half-melted. The Moselland company of Germany has a riesling with a bottle in the shape of a house cat.
The home wine maker may use any bottle, as the shape of the bottle does not affect the taste of the finished product. The sole exception is in producing sparkling wine, where thicker-walled bottles should be used to handle the excess pressure.
Most wine bottles standards have a bore (inner neck) diameter of 18.5 at the mouth of the bottle and increase to 21 mm before expanding into the full bottle.
Read more about this topic: Wine Bottle
Famous quotes containing the word shapes:
“For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day,”
—James Thomson (1834–1882)
“Her bones
under the flesh are white
as sand which along a beach
covers but keeps the print
of the crescent shapes beneath.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“All know that all the dead in the world about that place are stuck
And that should mother seek her son she’d have but little luck
Because the fires of Purgatory have ate their shapes away;
I swear to God I questioned them and all they had to say
Was fol de rol de rolly O.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)