WINE BOTTLES
Which Wines Like Which Forms?
When you take a look at the wine cabinets of WAYANA, our wine house in Kadıköy, Istanbul, you will immediately realize that wine bottles consist of several main forms. Let us also remind you that wine has a very colorful story of how wine vessels underwent changes in its long historical journey (about 9,000 years with concrete records). We will share this long story with you in parts. But today's article is about wine bottles made of glass. Let's get to know these bottles, which have undergone large and small changes over many years, taking their present form, and try to discover the traces of the changes in the bottles.
Although glass has neutral properties that do not affect the taste of wine in any way, its use in wine bottles was only possible in the 1600s. Because the coal furnaces, where the glass with the thickness and resistance required by the bottle will be produced, has reached the competence to be used only with the technological developments of this century. We owe the production of glass bottles in large quantities and at acceptable prices to George Ravenscroft, a British industrialist.
The size of a standard wine bottle is 75 (cl) centiliters. Let's first look at how the 75 cl measure has become the accepted standard in bottles. The average human lung can take in 750 ml of air at a time. If we consider that bottle production was done by hand and mouth before industrial glass production started, we can easily guess how the standard emerged: the volume that glass masters could blow without difficulty determined the size of the bottle in which production could be carried out without any problems.
In this article, let's take a look at two of the most used glass wine bottles together. The first is the Bordeaux (Bordeaux) wine bottle. Named after the Bordeaux wine region in France, this bottle is the most preferred bottle type by producers. The vertically rising edges narrow after the raised shoulders and extend as a perpendicular line to the mouth where the mushroom will settle. In order not to be damaged by the sun during the aging stage, dark green or brown colored Bordeaux type bottles are preferred for red wines, and light green or transparent ones are preferred for white and rosé wines. The priority of wines produced in large quantities around the world, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, is the Bordeaux type bottle.
The second of the types we are familiar with seeing in wine bottles is the Burgundy (Burgundy) type. Unlike the burgundy bottle, this bottle, which starts from the middle of the bottle and tapers at a gentle angle, does not have a high shoulder, but completes the rest with a steep rise when it reaches the diameter of the mouth. XIX. The most important advantage of the bottle, which emerged in the Burgundy region in the 19th century, from which it got its name, is the ease of production. Burgundy type bottles are used for Gamay, Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault wines.
The different forms in wine bottles are not limited to Bordeaux and Burgundy. We will continue with other bottles in the next articles.
