Bottle Logic -- Identifying Wine By The Look Of The Bottle

Bottle Logic -- Identifying Wine By The Look Of The Bottle by Kent Campbell

Did you know different wines have different bottles for a reason? Wine bottle making goes back in history and even today you can closely identify what's in a bottle of wine without even looking at the label. This article looks at wine bottles, describing the five common types identified as historical by white and red wine club associations.

The Glass Wine Bottle

The first effective storage containers for wine were large pottery jars known as amphorae. However, they didn't last long and became out of favor when the Romans began to blow glass into rounded bottles they stored in sand. In the 1730s, the Romans abandoned rounded bottles for bottles with straighter sides because they could be more conveniently stacked.

Modern wine bottles were born in 1821 when H. Ricketts & Co. Glassworks of Bristol, England, patented a machine that molded glass bottles. Traditional shapes developed in various European wine regions became standardized, mass-produced, and shared by all. Five particular designs including Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Alsace, and Mosel from Southern Spain and Portugal where the English obtained fortified wines became the norm. At a glance, these shapes allow you to identify the general content of most wine bottles before even reading the label.

Bordeaux Bottles

Bordeaux bottles have tall shoulders and straight sides. Wineries through the world that make Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, and blends of these along with other Bordeaux varietals use Bordeaux bottles. The shape is also common to the noble red wines of Italy and Spain prized by red wine club associations. The glass color of Bordeaux bottles is usually dark green, which originally resulted from impurities, but later found to protect wine from sunlight. The design is well suited for red wines that produce sediment as they age because the sediment collects in the shoulder of the bottle while pouring the wine. Sauvignon Blanc and Semillion, the primary white wines of Bordeaux, also come in Bordeaux bottles.

Burgundy Bottles

Wider Burgundy bottles have gently sloping shoulders. Winemakers use Burgundy bottles for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Gamay, the principal varietals of Burgundy. The Rhone style is similar to Burgundy and used for Syrah, Grenache, and the blended wines of the region.

Champagne Bottles

Champagne and sparkling wine from other areas require bottling in heavy glass with a deeply indented punt at the bottom to withstand six atmospheres of pressure, three times the pressure inside an average car tire. Without the punt, the bottom could easily blow out. The punt has the additional benefit of being a thumb grip to make the bottle easily held for pouring. The shape has a long thin neck with a lip around which the wire basket fastens to secure the cork.

Alsace And Mosel Bottles

The Mosel in Germany and Alsace in France use a very tall, slender bottle, usually green in color. The Rhine in Germany uses the same bottle although its color is brown. Wineries here and in the new world bottle Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Muller Thurgau wine in these bottles.

The fortified wines of Spain and Portugal, Port, Madeira, and Sherry, are typically bottled in heavy Bordeaux shaped bottles, although Port, which ages for decades and throws sediment, is often found in bottles with bulges in the neck that capture the sediment when the wine is poured or decanted.

The next time you're shopping for wine, take a hint from white and red wine club associations and see if you can identify what might be in a bottle before looking at the label.



Kent Campbell is an author for the popular wine of the month club, Celebrations Wine Club. Celebrations Wine Club is one of the few red wine club associations offering the wines of Italy and California.

Article Source: http://articles.directorygold.com

For more articles on Wine And Spirits visit the DirectoryGold Article Directory.

For links to sites where you can buy Wine visit the DirectoryGold Web Directory.

Champagne - All About The Fizz?

Champagne - All About The Fizz? by Fiona Muller

When it comes to celebrations like weddings, christenings, birthdays, engagements, garden parties or even if you have to launch a ship, there is only one thing that will fit the occasion, champagne. In fact whatever the event you can bring a sense of significance to any get-together by serving up a chilled bottle of this fizzy treat.

Champagne is a sparkling wine produced by inducing in the bottle secondary fermentation. This creates the bubbles which make the drink special. Many consumers call all sparkling wines champagne, but according to official EU rules, only those produced in a specific French ‘champagne’ region are legally allowed to call themselves champagne.

Most champagnes are a mixture of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, although there are those that are made from 100% Chardonnay or Pinot Noir grapes, or from a unique house recipe. Champagne as we know it is usually a brut (this makes it fairly dry in taste). There are other sparkling wines, such as cava but they cannot officially be called champagne because they are not from the French region.

Initially wines from the region of champagne were still, the first sparkling wine was produced in the 16th century. There are now more than 100 champagne houses and 15,000 smaller producers in Champagne. More than 300 million bottles are produced every year and out of this France exports approximately 55%. The biggest consumers of this bubbly liquor are the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Champagne is popular because it is seen as the drink of the rich and famous. This is where the vintages come in. The mention of “Cristal” at celebrity parties has led to the drink becoming more sought after. It is also synonymous with Royalty and events such as the Ascot races, the Henley regatta, and prestigious garden parties. Also major motor sports grand prix events have bought into the champagne life-style by allowing winners to celebrate by spraying the drink at trophy presentations. The sight of this expensive and majestic fluid going to waste has heightened the appeal of the drink and the idea that it represents success and celebration.

Champagne should always be served cold and poured into a champagne flute. True etiquette says that the glass should never be more than a third full. One point to be careful of when drinking champagne is that alcohol is absorbed into the blood more quickly than drinking still white wine. So be careful!



Fiona Muller has been writing for over 20 years. She is a qualified journalist and has worked in food and drink writing for the last few years. For more information visit Laithwaites.co.uk

Article Source: http://articles.directorygold.com

For more articles on Wine And Spirits visit the DirectoryGold Article Directory

For links to sites where you can buy Wine visit the DirectoryGold Web Directory

Appreciating Wine - Educate your Palate

Appreciating Wine - Educate your Palate by Ian Love

When you are tasting wines, you are not quaffing an alcoholic beverage for the enjoyment of intoxication. In fact, at many wine tasting parties and in tasting rooms at many wineries, you do not even swallow the wine that you taste. Wine tasting is more of an art form that requires you to keep all of your senses about you in order to judge wines soundly.

Wine tasting is not how you would always want to enjoy wine, but it is a way to learn which wines you enjoy. By sampling several wines and comparing them to one another, you get a sense of the similarities and differences between them. The more often you sample flights of wine thus, the more of a base you have to judge wines.

If you have trouble being able to tell the difference between a Shiraz and a merlot, the best thing you could do would be to attend a wine tasting that offers a flight of some combination of the two. You will then taste and make notes on each wine, which will help you to distinguish the difference between the two varietals better.

Note taking is an important aspect of wine tasting. In order to remember how each wine looks, smells, feels and tastes, you will need to make notations in a standardized manner for each wine.

In order to take such notes, you will need to consider how each sip of wine affects your senses. First, hold your glass of wine up against a white background in good light. Is it opaque or transparent? Is it dark or light? Before going on to the next step, write down the answer to this question.

After taking in the appearance of the wine, swirl it around in your glass to mix in a little oxygen and then take a big whiff of it. How does it smell? Does it smell more like fruit or flowers? Does it have nuance smells that remind you of anything?

Placing nuance aromas of a wine can be the most difficult step in wine tasting. Often a nuance aroma is vague, though pleasant, but difficult to place. In order to help you place the aromas that you smell, you can utilize an aroma wheel that names the nuance smells that often accompany wine.

If you cannot place the aroma of the wine that you are smelling, check the aroma wheel. Chances are, you will see the name of the aroma that you smell. Write down the bigger smells of the wine and the nuance smells of the wine and then take a sip of the wine.

Do not swallow the wine. Instead, swish it around in your mouth to saturate your taste buds. Make a note of your first impressions of what it tastes like as you hold the wine in your mouth. After a moment of savoring the wine, either swallow it or spit it out.

Lastly, what kind of impression does the wine leave lingering in your mouth after it is no longer there? Write down the aftertaste impression that the wine leaves in your mouth and you will have a complete impression of a wine to which you can compare other wines.



Ian Love is the owner of Australian online wine store, Liquor Merchants, and has been a leader in the Perth restaurant industry for over 30 years and runs one of Australia's largest wine clubs.

Article Source: http://articles.directorygold.com

For more articles on Wine And Spirits visit the DirectoryGold Article Directory

For links to sites where you can buy Wine visit the DirectoryGold Web Directory