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Wine
Bottle Shapes
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Bordeaux:
Straight sided bottles with steep, tall, shoulders. Typically
made with dark green glass for the red wines, light green
glass for the white wines and clear for the dessert wines.
Probably the most common shape used for red wine around
the world. Commonly used in the USA and Italy as well as
most other wine producing regions.
Excellent shape
for wines that tend to throw a lot of sediment. Steep shoulders
serve to dam the sediments as you pour the liquid, in contrast
to shallower shoulders which would not.
Of course American
wineries have no rules about wine bottle shapes so anything
can be used. For the most part this is still the shape of
preference for many wineries, though thickness may vary.
There are many California wineries that use similar shaped
bottles which are much thicker, taller and heavier. They
can be very difficult to store in conventional cellars but
seem to be in vogue for marketing reasons.
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Burgundy:
Shallow gentle sloping shoulders, with both red and white
wines in similar light green glass and occassionally in
clear glass. Typically these are sturdy, heavy bottles.
This shape is also widely used for Rhone wines and throughout
the New World for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Rhone varietals.
There are some
slight variations on this bottle. A small number of Southern
Rhone wineries use bottles that have a slight triangular
cross section across their girth.
Special racking
is needed to accomidate these bottles in most cellars. It
is good advice to consider this bottle in any cellar design,
since many wines around the world use this shape.
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Fortified
wines:
Port, Madeira and Sherry, typically use sturdy bottles like
this. Vintage Port may often have a larger bulge in the neck
to help capture the sediment when it is decanted. Often times
these are wines that need many years to properly age and tend
to throw a bit of sediment. These bottles usually have a cork
stopper rather than the larger corks typically used for other
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Champagne:
This is a bottle design that was born out of necessity.
Very thick glass with gentle sloping shoulders and a long
neck. Also contains a rather large punt, or indentation,
in the bottom of the bottle. Champagne bottles need to withstand
the high pressures exerted by the carbonation development
after bottling. Pressures can exceed 90 psi. The punt is
needed to help reduce the pressure felt along the bottom
of the bottle. Without it, the bottles would blow out and
break much more frequently.
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Alsace and
Mosel:
A narrow, thin tall bottle with a very gentle sloping shoulder.
Typically light green in color though occassionally you
will find brown glass.
They typically
use the same bottle for most of the wines from dry to sweet
in style. This is true for all white varietals typical of
this region, such as Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Pinot
Gris.
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Notes:
American wineries don't really adhere to any standard for
bottle shapes, but on average do tend to follow these guidelines
stated above
.Rhone wine bottles
can be just a tad different than Burgundy bottles, often
times being just a little thinner and sometimes carrying
a glass emblazed coat of arms on the front.
See:
Wine Bottles Sizes
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