Pinot Noir's bottles

What convention do you refer to? If you scour your local wine merchant, you'll typically find 3 different bottle shapes: the slope-shouldered Burgundy bottle (your Pinot Noir bottle); the Bordeaux bottle (vertical sides, sharp shoulders) and the tapered bottles of Germany and Alsace. Of the 3, I'd view the Bordeaux bottle as the most "funky" in that it must have been the most difficult to produce for early glassblowers (sharp angles aren't easy to get). But, because of the amount of sediment thrown by aging Bordeaux wines (and Port, where the same shape is used), the Bordelais adopted the steep shoulders to help trap the sediment during decanting of aged wine. By the time California got into the wine business, it was easy to produce any shape of bottle, so they adopted the Bordeaux model for their "Bordeaux" varietals, and the Burgundy shape for their "Burgundy" varietals.

HTH Mark Lipton

As a matter of fact, for storing bottles the Bordeaux shaped is best. A pile of Bordeaux bottles is much more stable than their Burgundy or Alsace cousins. And they take less place.

So one might conclude Bordeaux is becoming the standard shape for practical reasons. But I don't see such a trend: I have examples where producers changed the shape from Bordeaux to Burgundy. I never asked them why, but usually I welcome the shape change.

IMHO the bottle should reflect the content, just as stemware is supposed to do:

Bordeaux: austere, intellectual approach Burgundy: baroque, hedonistic approach Flute (Alsace): elegant, sublime

Just my opinion. Martin

"Martin Schulz" wrote in news:c6jaq7$qi4$ snipped-for-privacy@news.siemens.at:

Space? actually if you are laying the bottles out alternating neck in , neck out the Burgundies (and Alsatians)tend to take less space as they fit together more like a jig saw puzzle. It just depends on how one arranges things.

Sorry. I was not specific enough. Bordeaux shape takes less space in most standard wine racks, e.g.

Martin

"Martin Schulz" wrote in news:c6l1s7$f29$ snipped-for-privacy@news.siemens.at:

and I apologize for getting cute Bordeaux bottles can be stored as I indicated as well and what is more can generally stack on top of each other without danger of dumping forward.

again I was over thinking.