You’d think wine people
would have enough to worry about, what with boycotts and recessions and root
louses. But you know what they argue about? That dent in the bottom of the
wine bottle - known as the punt or kick - and what it’s doing there.
So that you may choose a position on this crucial issue affecting our world
today, I present to you the current theories - all of them right, I am told.
Theory #1: Stability. A base is better off concave than convex if you want
to keep your cold ducks in a row. Theory #2: the word "punt" derives from
pointu, a stick that early glassmakers used to anchor the end of the bottle
while they blew. When removed, it left a dent.
Theory #3: Strength, an important issue for pre-OSHA cellar-rats in
Champagne who wore iron masks to guard against frequently exploding
Champagne bottles. ("Poor Gaston…he just couldn’t take the pressure…")
Luckily for them, a royal campaign to save the forests forced glassblowers
to switch from wood to coal furnaces, resulting in hotter fires and stronger
glass. But it was the punched-in bottom that removed pressure and really
shored up the design. Check any bottle: you always get a kick with
Champagne.
Early wine bottles were squat, and stoppered with wood or rags tied down
over the string rim, still there on many bottles. Then along came cork with
its airtight properties and for the first time wine could last and even
improve in the bottle. Suddenly it made sense to stock a cellar. Of course
the wine had to be on its side, if the cork was going to stay wet enough to
keep a seal, and rotund bottles don’t recline or stack very well. Slimmer
bottles made a difference, but theory #4 says it was the kick that really
helped the storage problem, allowing, as it does, the neck of one bottle to
nestle snugly up the ying-yang of the next.
The cylindrical Bordeaux bottle, the one we use for Cab, Merlot, Sauvignon
Blanc and Zinfandel, stacks very well, an important feature in a port city
where a lot of wine was packed into ships. By the time Bordeaux was
drinkable in those days it had thrown a bunch of sediment. The high
shoulders on the bottle blocked some of that from pouring into your glass.
Theory #5 says that the trench around the punt is there to trap the dregs.
Burgundy, being landlocked, didn’t do much shipping. Its wines are ready
younger, and sediment is considered part of the drinking experience. Hence
the sloping shoulders and rounded body of the bottle we use for Pinot Noir
and Chardonnay.
Other shapes include the Rhine bottle with its Freudian proportions, always
too assertive for your refrigerator, and the German bocksbeutel, supposedly
modeled on a goat’s private parts, no doubt because Marie Antoinette’s were
busy inspiring the champagne coup.
Despite differences in shape, the standard bottle is 750 ml, one lungful of
air to a glassblower. But you’ll notice that some bottles manage to be
bigger without looking empty. How do they do that? The punt, of course, to
which theory #6 assigns the deceptive task of filling up space inside the
bottle.
At a restaurant the other day I heard a man explain to his date that a deep
dent in the derriere was the sign of a really high quality wine. Voilà
theory #7: Because people think it matters.
That leaves #8, the affected and dangerous business of holding the bottle by
its very hind end to pour. People who feel the need to put on these sorts of
airs should be clocked smartly upside the head, an excellent use for the
punt-end of a bottle.
By Jennifer Rosen: http://www.vinchotzi.com