pinueve wrote:
> Except for the Cavit i had yesterday, why do most pinot noir's come in these
> funky non conventional wine 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