Wine bottle

A wine bottle is a bottle used for holding wine, generally made of glass. Some wines are fermented in the bottle, others are bottled only after fermentation.

Recently, the bottle has become a standard unit of volume to describe sales in the wine industry, measuring 750 millilitres (26.40 imp fl oz; 25.36 US fl oz). However, bottles are produced in a variety of volumes and shapes.

Wine bottles are traditionally sealed with cork, but screw-top caps are becoming popular, and there are several other methods used to seal a bottle.

Sizes

Many traditional wine bottle sizes are named for Biblical kings and historical figures. The chart below lists the sizes of various wine bottles in multiples relating to a standard bottle of wine, which is 0.75 litres (0.20 US gal; 0.16 imp gal) (five 150 mL servings). The "wineglassful"—an official unit of the apothecaries' system of weights—is much smaller at 2.5 imp fl oz (71 ml).

Most champagne houses are unable to carry out secondary fermentation in bottles larger than a magnum due to the difficulty in riddling large, heavy bottles. After the secondary fermentation completes, the champagne must be transferred from the magnums into larger bottles, which results in a loss of pressure. Some believe this re-bottling exposes the champagne to greater oxidation and therefore results in an inferior product compared to champagne which remains in the bottle in which it was fermented.

Wine

Wine (from Latin vinum) is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes or other fruits. Due to a natural chemical balance, grapes ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, water, or other nutrients.Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts produce different styles of wine. These variations result from the complex interactions between the biochemical development of the grape, the reactions involved in fermentation, the terroir (the special characteristics imparted by geography, geology, climate and plant genetics) and subsequent appellation (the legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown), along with human intervention in the overall process.

Wine has been produced for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of wine to date was found in the country of Georgia, where 8000-year old wine jars were uncovered. Traces of wine have also been found in Iran with 7,000-year-old wine jars and in Armenia with the 6100-year old Areni-1 winery, which is considered to be the earliest known winery by far. The earliest form of grape-based fermented drink however, was found in northern China, where archaeologists discovered 9000-year old pottery jars. Wine had reached the Balkans by c. 4500 BC and was consumed and celebrated in ancient Greece, Thrace and Rome. Throughout history, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects, which are evident at normal serving sizes.

Jewellery

Jewellery or jewelry (/ˈdʒuːᵊlᵊri/) consists of small decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes, and the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal, often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as shells and other plant materials may be used. It is one of the oldest type of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery. The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common. Historically, the most widespread influence on jewellery in terms of design and style have come from Asia.

Bottle

A bottle is a rigid container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a mouth. By contrast, a jar has a relatively large mouth or opening which may be as wide as the overall container. Bottles are often made of glass, clay, plastic, aluminium or other impervious materials, and typically used to store liquids such as water, milk, soft drinks, beer, wine, cooking oil, medicine, shampoo, ink, and chemicals. A device applied in the bottling line to seal the mouth of a bottle is termed an external bottle cap, closure, or internal stopper. A bottle can also be sealed by a conductive "innerseal" by using induction sealing.

The bottle has developed over millennia of use, with some of the earliest examples appearing in China, Phoenicia, Rome and Crete. Bottles are often recycled according to the SPI recycling code for the material. Some regions have a legally mandated deposit which is refunded after returning the bottle to the retailer.

Etymology

First attested in English in the 14th century, the word bottle derives from Old French boteille, which comes from vulgar Latin butticula, itself from late Latin buttis meaning "cask", which is perhaps the latinisation of the Greek βοῦττις (bouttis), "vessel".