Does the depth of the base of a wine bottle indicate the quality and why?!
Does the depth of the base of a wine bottle indicate the quality and why?
I heard it was to do with the way wine bottles are stacked in warehouses.
Answers:
Punt size of bottles has plenty of urban myths... let's dispel a few...
- has no bearing on quality of wine within
- wine bottles are not 'stacked' in wineries for storage so punt size is not important.
- not a marketing ploy, all bottles are clearly marked as to volume ie: 750ml / 1000 ml etc so unless you cannot read or are too lazy to look then it's pretty easy to determine how much wine you are getting for your money.
Punt size IS relevant as it does provide additional bottle durability especially with wine bottled under pressure. Check out a bottle of Champagne... without a substantial punt the wine bottle would never stand up to the internal pressure of the carbon dioxide trapped in the bottle. Exploding bottles all over the place!
It's marketing, you don't "stack" wine end to end. Push the bottom base up and in and it looks like you're getting more because the bottle has to be taller to make-up the difference
good red wine will have a lot of sediment. The ridges at the botom of a bottle will trap a lot of that sediment. There is no reason for white wine to have the indent.
Wine bottles cannot be stacked - it provides less than desirable conditions for the wine, and no warehouse or vineyard would ever want to jeopardize their product.
Some wine bottles have a deeper punt (the inverted base is called the "punt") than others, it doesn't have much to do with quality, the punt is simply to collect sediment as the wine is stored. Some cheaper wines like Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck do not have punts, but those are wines that are meant to be consumed right away rather than collected.
The Punt reinforces the bottle. It makes it stronger. And no, it has nothing to do with quality. I have a $500 bottle of wine and a $10 bottle of wine. The punts are EXACTLY the same on them.