Bottle Shapes
Written By: Brian Freedman on Mon, Jun 1st 2009
Wine bottles come in four main varieties: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Riesling, and Champagne. And while these are far from the only kinds of wine available, they have inspired the vast majority of bottle-shapes in use today.
Bordeaux bottles are the ones with the high, straight sides. They are one of the two main shapes of bottle used throughout the world for still wine, and are generally associated with cabernet sauvignon and merlot, though they’re certainly not limited to those grapes varieties.
Burgundy bottles are the ones with the wide bottoms—they’re vaguely hourglass-shaped. Traditionally used in Burgundy, they have become, more or less, the standard shape of bottle for those two most Burgundian grape varieties: Pinot noir and chardonnay.
Riesling bottles are long and skinny, and often remind all but the most riesling-attuned to cheap sweet swill like Blue Nun. But don’t be fooled: Riesling—the good stuff—is some of the most delicious (and often affordable) wine in the world.
Champagne bottles—and this is a shape that is used for the vast majority of sparkling wines produced around the world—look a lot like Burgundy bottles, but are made from far thicker glass in order to prevent all the pressure in there from causing an explosion. Bubbly is fun; flying glass is not.
