A good looking bottle, as we talked about last month, is a combination of several elements. After taking a more in depth look at what is going on toward the top, time has come to look at bottles and labels.
Glass Bottles:
There are several types of finishes used in the wine business. WineShop At Home currently bottles its wines with only two of them, the screw cap finish and the standard, or cork finish.
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The bottom of the wine bottle, known as the bearing surface, heel, punt or knurling, is designed for stability to avoid excessive sliding of the bottle. To my knowledge, every manufacturer has its own design and I am not aware that there is a particular significance between all of them. However, the markings around and underneath the bottle are very useful. They indicate the volume, the manufacturer, the date of conception and the oven cavity number the bottle was baked into -- this last part is very useful for quality control issues with a truckload of cases.
The style of bottle or "glass mold," has been associated with a particular wine region.
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- A Pinot Noir is traditionally bottled using a Burgundy-style bottle with no shoulders.
- Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet and Bordeaux varietals are usually bottled with a Claret style bottle.
- Within the Burgundy-style and Claret-style categories, there are several colors, shape of shoulders and weight differences.
- The Frisch 2012 Riesling comes in an Alsatian type of bottle called Hock.
- The Grand Cadeau Rosรฉ Sparkling and Petit Cadeau Semi-Seco have a special type of bottle designed for sparkling wines built to withstand pressure.