Bottles and corks essential to wine storage, wine glass bottles, oak corks and corkscrews

The use of glass bottles and oak corks to store wine plays a vital role in the development of wine and also brings opportunities for the preservation of collectible wines. Nowadays, opening the cork with a screw corkscrew has become a classic action for opening wine. Today, we will talk about this topic.

Looking back at the history of wine development, the combination of cork and glass bottle solved the problem of long-term preservation of wine and easily deteriorated. This is a milestone in the history of wine. According to historical records, as early as 4000 years ago, Egyptians began to use glass bottles. In other regions, clay pots were widely used for storage, and until the beginning of the seventeenth century, wine sacs made of sheepskin were used.

In the 1730s, Kenelm Digby, the father of modern wine bottles, first used a wind tunnel to increase the temperature of the furnace cavity. When the glass mixture was melted, sand, potassium carbonate, and slaked lime were added to make it. Heavy glass wine bottles are used in the wine industry. The wine bottles are made into a cylindrical shape for convenient storage and transportation. As a result, European wine-producing countries began to use glass bottled wine in large quantities. In order to solve the problem of glass fragility, Italian wine merchants use straw, wicker or leather to pack the outside of the glass bottle. Until 1790, the shape of wine bottles in Bordeaux, France had the embryonic form of modern wine bottles. Moreover, the wine of Bordeaux has also begun to have a huge development.

In order to seal the glass bottle, it was found that the cork stopper in the Mediterranean area can be used. It wasn’t until the middle of the seventeenth century that oak corks were truly associated with wine bottles. Because the oak cork seamlessly solves a very contradictory problem: the wine of wine needs to be isolated from the air, but it cannot completely block the air, and a trace of air needs to enter the wine bottle. The wine must undergo subtle chemical changes in such a “closed” environment to make the wine more rich in aroma.

Many friends may not know that in order to be able to pull up the simple problem of the cork stuffed in the mouth of the wine bottle, our ancestors have tried their best. In the end, I found a tool that could easily drill into the oak and take out the cork. According to historical records, this tool originally used to take bullets and soft stuffing out of a gun was accidentally discovered that it can easily open the cork. In 1681, it was described as “a steel worm used to pull a cork out of a bottle”, and it was not officially called a corkscrew until 1720.

More than three hundred years have passed, and the glass bottles, corks and corkscrews for storing wine have been continuously improved and perfected day by day. Most wine producing areas also use distinctive bottle types, such as Bordeaux and Burgundy bottles. Wine bottles and oak corks are not just the packaging of wine, they have been integrated with the wine, the wine is aged in the bottle, and the aroma of the wine is growing and changing every moment. It is reverie and expectant. Thank you. Pay attention to cutting-edge wines, and hope that reading our article will bring you enlightenment or harvest.