Bottle Shape and Color

Wine does not like sunlight so colored bottles are used on longer lived wines. Brown is probably best but is not used much except in Italy and Germany.

The slender, long necks are hock style and used in Germanic wines, the shorter sloped ones are preferred for Burgundy, Loire and the Rhone valley wines and the straight shoulders are for Bordeaux.

If you are asking why they favor one over the other it's tradition as much as anything else. A little web searching should find a lot of info; start here.

It's a good general knowledge page.

Joe

I do find that I have some expectations about what sort of wine I'll find in a bottle of a particular shape.

I also find that bordeaux-style bottle stack much better in an open-bin wine rack, while Hock-style bottles don't stack well that way at all.

Jon [Check out my winemaking homepage

More tradition than anything.

Assuming you are cellaring properly, the colour of the bottle doesn't really matter. I guess if it's sitting on a store shelf for months a tint could make some difference, but I'm pretty sure that winemakers pick their bottles based on history and aesthetics.

I've also heard the explanation that because Bordeaux are big, powerful wines (relatively speaking for France), they come in a more masculine bottle (i.e. broad, square shoulder) while Pinot Noir is considered a more feminine wine and thus has a more feminine shape to the bottle (sloped shoulders, more slender shape overall).

Jon The only good way to stack Hoch (and for that matter Burgundy bottles is points in. That sabilizes the whole mass. i do this with sparklers too. The only issue is space, you nned a good 15 to 18 inches to stack this way.

Joe

Thanks, Joe! I'll give that a try. Jon