"Mark Lipton" > wrote in message
...
> 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.
>
As a matter of fact, for storing bottles the Bordeaux shaped is best. A pile
of Bordeaux bottles is much more stable than their Burgundy or Alsace
cousins. And they take less place.

So one might conclude Bordeaux is becoming the standard shape for practical
reasons. But I don't see such a trend: I have examples where producers
changed the shape from Bordeaux to Burgundy. I never asked them why, but
usually I welcome the shape change.

IMHO the bottle should reflect the content, just as stemware is supposed to
do:

Bordeaux: austere, intellectual approach
Burgundy: baroque, hedonistic approach
Flute (Alsace): elegant, sublime

Just my opinion.
Martin