EN 
TR Part II: The Bottles in the Laboratory
While referring to the cryptic notes Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary, it is equally useful to look at what was unfolding in other parts of London. When we follow the trail of developments that led Pepys to write down “Ho Bryan,” we encounter remarkable advances across many fields that, at first glance, seem entirely unrelated. Among them lies a contribution to the world of wine by Robert Boyle, one of the most respected scientific minds of his time. It is a study easily overlooked unless examined carefully. Yet to truly understand Boyle’s work with wine in the 1670s, we must go back nearly a decade earlier.
The Man Who Discovered Air
In 1654, the German physicist Otto von Guericke joined two large metal hemispheres and evacuated the air inside. Eight horses were harnessed to each side, yet despite their immense effort, they could not pull the hemispheres apart. Finding the apparatus used in this experiment cumbersome, Robert Boyle and his assistant Robert Hooke developed a far more refined instrument in the early 1660s: the air pump. This device would permanently alter the course of scientific history.
Using the air pump, Boyle evacuated the air from within a glass chamber and overturned everything that had been assumed about the vacuum. He conducted a series of experiments. First, he placed a lit candle inside the chamber. As the air was removed, the flame extinguished. In another experiment, he placed a small bell inside. At first, the bell’s movement produced sound. But once the air was evacuated, the bell continued to move silently. In yet another experiment, he placed a bird inside the chamber and observed that, deprived of air, it could not survive.
Through these experiments, Boyle proved that air was not merely “nothingness.” It was essential to combustion and, more importantly, to life itself. He had discovered that within air lay a mysterious force that sustained existence.
When Obsession Turned Toward Wine
By 1670, Boyle’s fascination with “air and life” found a new subject: wine. He was not a connoisseur. Yet his obsession with health and the purity of substances brought him into close contact with it. For his experiment, he selected a young French red wine from the 1669 vintage, a claret.
The questions that had driven his earlier experiments about the existence of air had largely been answered in the 1660s. But now a new question occupied his mind: what would happen if, instead of removing air completely, a substance were sealed in such a way that all contact with air was prevented?
Time Capsules and Hermetic Seals
On the shelves of his laboratory, Boyle arranged dozens of glass vessels from the same vintage like time capsules. With the meticulousness of a true scientist, he did more than simply cork them. He applied what we now call hermetic sealing. Some vessels were sealed by heating and melting the glass at their necks. Others were reinforced with thick resins and sealing compounds designed to prevent even the slightest infiltration of air.
His intention was not to drink the wine the next evening. His goal was to observe how even the smallest microscopic interaction with air could alter a substance over time.
Alongside the sealed vessels stood open containers, serving as a control group. One would age. The other would inevitably turn to vinegar.
Transformation Instead of Decay
Over the years, Boyle opened these sealed vessels one by one, observing and recording their contents. In doing so, he unknowingly performed what we would now recognize as the first scientific form of a vertical tasting. He noted the differences between wines sealed for one year, two years, and four years.
His expectation had been simple: that the wine would preserve its freshness.
What he discovered was far more remarkable.
The wine had not merely survived. It had transformed.
Boyle recorded changes in color, the gradual settling of sediments, and the development of more complex aromas. Without realizing it, he was laying the foundation for concepts that would later become central to wine science: oxidation and reduction.
Cut off entirely from oxygen, the wine did not spoil. Instead, it evolved. Its tannins softened. Its aromas shifted from fresh fruit toward deeper, earthier, and more layered expressions. Boyle’s unusually refined sensory awareness allowed him to define, through taste, a chemical transformation unfolding silently within glass.
A Technological Revolution: Coal and Hard Glass
Earlier, we mentioned that developments across seemingly unrelated fields were reshaping the world of wine. In reality, Boyle’s experiment was made possible by a technological shift in England’s glass industry.
In the 1600s, wood-fired furnaces were banned from glass production. Instead, coal-fired furnaces were introduced. These produced thicker, stronger glass bottles—distinctively English in character—that could withstand Boyle’s rigorous hermetic sealing techniques.
Boyle’s detailed notes remain the only surviving record from that era documenting wine’s micro-evolution inside a sealed container, removed from the porous environment of barrels and confined within itself.
From Laboratory to Cellar
Robert Boyle was a genius who revealed both the life-giving and destructive nature of air. The moments when he opened his sealed vessels and recorded the changes in wine represent the first true laboratory analysis in the history of winemaking.
Behind the mysterious pleasure Pepys recorded with his palate lay Boyle’s silent and systematic observations of the invisible struggle between air and matter.
Nearly a decade after depriving a bird of air to demonstrate its necessity for life, Boyle deprived wine of air—and in doing so, discovered its capacity for transformation.
But how did these laboratory observations evolve into a global legend?
In the final part of this series, we will explore how science and pleasure merged to become a global economic force.
