Apparently there are a dozen or so different “classic” wine bottle shapes with all kinds of producer variations. But we can simplify our discussion to three basic shapes that most winemakers bottle their wine with. These are the Alsace/Mosel bottle, the Burgundy bottle and the Bordeaux bottle. You can see them in that order left to right below.
The Alsace/Mosel bottle is the most beautiful – tall, slim, elegant, and has one other thing in its favour – it’s generally lighter than the other two.
The Burgundy bottle has sloping shoulders with short sides and a slightly wider body than the other two. The Rhone Valley bottle is a modest variation of the Burgundy bottle. This is the earliest bottle shape and is believed to have been easier for bottle makers to make historically.
The Bordeaux bottle has straight sides and high shoulders. I’ll come right out and say this is my favourite bottle for one important reason: it stacks well in the cellar. As you can see in the picture below from my cellar, those long straight sides provide a solid stable resting place for adjacent bottles.
Trying to stack the Burgundy or Alsace bottle in a shelf is an accident waiting to happen, you really do need to have single bottle racks in the cellar for them. Or leave them in the box they came in with their moulded cardboard support. In the picture below this Syrah bottle stack is so unstable I had to put this padded bit of wood between the second and top rows so the top bottles wouldn’t fall out on the floor!
If I had my way, all wine would be bottled in the Bordeaux bottle. But it will never happen. Indeed, although the Bordeaux bottle is perfectly fine for White Bordeaux, i.e Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, a large proportion of NZ Sauvignon producers bottle their product in the Burgundy bottle. Why???
And then, just when we have a perfectly good thing with that straight sided high-shouldered, perfectly symmetrical Bordeaux bottle, some producer has to change it to show the importance of their wine. So they puff up the bottle shoulders to be wider than the base, and suddenly that neat stacking in the cellar shelf is royally screwed up. The Vinalba Malbec bottle on the left has a 238mm circumference near the base and a 265mm circumference at the shoulders. The Tenuta Ulisse Vendemme bottle is 245mm at the base and 275mm at the shoulders. Really messes with your stack planning!
Or another thing that really does my head in! Glassware is getting lighter and stronger, some of those expensive Riedels or Zaltos feel like a feather in your hand. But when it comes to wine bottles too many wineries have yet to catch on!. They persist in making heavy bottles – whatever shape, and some seem to think it’s a badge of honour for their top wines to be in a bottle that is twice as heavy as the average. The ecological damage from shipping those heavy bottles from one side of the world to the other is immense. Fortunately, with some pointed encouragement from noted wine critics like Jancis Robinson (who routinely reports on bottle weight when she assesses wines), some producers are getting the message and using lighter bottles. The Sustainable Wine Roundtable, an industry body representing leading wine retailers around the world has agreed to reduce the average bottle weight for wines in their range by about 25%.
Savvy producers are already climbing onboard, just this week Jancis’s “Wine news in 5 minutes’ contained a report of how all 318 members of the Albeisa Consorzio, a wine producer consortium representing producers in Italy’s Langhe and Roero region including “some of the most famous names in Barolo and Barbaresco” have agreed to use a standard lightweight bottle for their region. This bottle weighs only 410gm, compared with the old traditional bottle of 575gm.
Now all of that discussion was about the shape and weight of the 750ml standard wine bottle, but another of my pet peeves is why so few wines are available in 375ml half-bottles! A number of Bordeaux producers use them, but elsewhere they are rare, except for dessert wines. It’s annoying! The half bottle is the perfect size for a couple to share with a meal a few times a week and stay within moderate consumption limits. Or the perfect size for one person on a one-off basis. When I dabble in Bordeaux En Primeur, I try to get half bottles for another reason – the wine develops faster, and this is an advantage for my advancing years – how disappointing it would be on my deathbed to leave a cellar half full of prized wines because they never reached their drinking window! Below 750 ml & 375ml Bordeaux bottles.
And here’s another question – for the vast majority of wines, which are consumed within hours of leaving the supermarket - why do they need to be in bottles at all? The bag in a box has a bad reputation because most bag in the box wine thirty years ago was plonk! But the bag in the box system is actually quite brilliant. A 2 litre size is perfect at a party and the empty takes less space than 3 bottles. Because the wine dispenses without egress of oxygen into the bag, the wine will stay fresh much longer than the bottle – and you won’t have to mess around with those vacuum things that don’t actually work very well or pay a fortune for argon dispensers. Peregrine Wines in Central Otago are now producing a thoroughly decent Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris in a 2 litre box and I really hope they succeed and the market catches on. Here’s a pic of their Saddleback Pinot Noir 2 litre pack.
Wine bottles have been with us since the 17th century and for some it's hard to imagine how things might be different. Personally I think respecting tradition means paying attention to the purpose behind the traditions - which frees us to adapt in line with that purpose when technology allows. Wine bottles were about convenience and wine preservation, surely we can do better today than just keep doing the same?
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