Anyone who ’s pick up awine bottlehas for sure noticed one of its most typical features : the big incision in the bottom .
The technical term for thedent is punt , and sure it ’s been there for centuries to suffice a very specific and scientific purpose . Or not ?
What Is a Wine Bottle Punt For?
There ’s no real consensus on why the punt is there , but it turns out to have a lot of pragmatic uses . So no matter why shabu electric fan commence putting punt in bottles , they ’ve stuck around .
The first and perchance most plausible rationality for the indenture at the base of the wine bottle is that itmakes the bottle less cranky . wine-colored bottles are often tall and narrow , and when they were originally bridge player bodge , theglass blowingprocess create a seam at the bottom .
Adding the punt push the bed up into the feeding bottle , and the extra weight helped keep the bottom where it belongs on the tabular array .
You might assume that the punt is there to catch wine-colored sediment — or settlings — in the bottom of the bottle , which it kind of does . But when you ’re rain cats and dogs wine , the sediment is actuallycaught by the shouldersof the bottle , where it trend before the neck .
Many bottles of wine-colored are stored on their sides anyway , so the punt does n’t weigh . And there ’s the fact that wine-coloured — like White person or rosé smorgasbord — do n’t really have sediments but their bottles still have punts .
That direct us to a twain ofsneakier reasonsfor that pitting .
Is a Punt a Sign of Quality Wine?
For a tenacious metre , the finest wine-coloured had punts and garish wine-coloured did n’t . But then the makers of cheaper wine-coloured calculate out that people would pay more for wine in bottles with punts because they thought it think of the wine was of a gamey character . So today a punt does n’t of necessity signal a caliber vino .
Then there ’s the fact that the bottlelookslike it has a draw of wine inside , but part of that space is taken up by the punt . you could make the punt and the nursing bottle as cock-a-hoop as you like , but most bottles still carry the same measure 750 ml of vino .
No matter why the punt was put there , it turn out to bepretty utile .
you could put your thumb in the Irish punt while you hold the bottom of the bottle as youpour a chalk . This help avoid transferring the heating plant from your hand to the wine .
Speaking of temperature , the punting provides more Earth’s surface area , which helps some varieties chill quicker . And you could slide the cork of one bottle into the Irish pound of another so as to store more bottles on their sides .