Wine Bottles
May. 24th, 2006 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakOh no! I now know a general outline of the history of the wine bottle. Now there is one more thing for me to be annoyed by when I read novels set in standard off the shelf fantasy kingdoms.
Apparently bottles are one of those ubiquitous items that we use all the time and don't realize how relatively recent and difficult to make they are. I mean they seem low tech, but they are very dependent upon technology. Much like the village blacksmith found in every village of any size in most fantasy novels.
Summed up: Bottles didn't become common until the 20th century, though they'd assumed more or less modern shapes in the 18th century. The answer as usual was industry making something that previously had been reserved for better vintages and wealthier people becoming something used for nearly every wine. Prior to this table wines were typically sold by the barrel and decanted at the restaurant or by the wine merchant into whatever was most convenient. Prior to the 18th century bottles were usually owned by the consumer (some rich bloke) who as often as not had a seal or something on the bottle. They also looked rather like a clove of garlic and were not easy to store or transport, so wine was delivered in casks and then decanted into bottles for longer term storage since wood won't store wine for very long before it becomes vinegar. And even these older bottles had only been around since the start of the 17th century. There were bottles before that, but they were generally weaker as they were made using cooler wood fires. I won't even speak of the older techniques used prior to 1630; suffice to say almost no one stored his wine in glass. The stuff was too damn expensive.
Since most fantasy novels seem to be set sometime between 1300 and 1600 the next time I see the tall cylindrical wine bottle in one I'll throw it at the author's head. <grin> All this from just trying to figure out why the hell bottles ended up being more or less standarized at 750ml. Answer: Most people think it is because that is about the amount a glass blower could get into a bottle when making it in one breath, but the real answer is, "Haven't a clue."
Apparently bottles are one of those ubiquitous items that we use all the time and don't realize how relatively recent and difficult to make they are. I mean they seem low tech, but they are very dependent upon technology. Much like the village blacksmith found in every village of any size in most fantasy novels.
Summed up: Bottles didn't become common until the 20th century, though they'd assumed more or less modern shapes in the 18th century. The answer as usual was industry making something that previously had been reserved for better vintages and wealthier people becoming something used for nearly every wine. Prior to this table wines were typically sold by the barrel and decanted at the restaurant or by the wine merchant into whatever was most convenient. Prior to the 18th century bottles were usually owned by the consumer (some rich bloke) who as often as not had a seal or something on the bottle. They also looked rather like a clove of garlic and were not easy to store or transport, so wine was delivered in casks and then decanted into bottles for longer term storage since wood won't store wine for very long before it becomes vinegar. And even these older bottles had only been around since the start of the 17th century. There were bottles before that, but they were generally weaker as they were made using cooler wood fires. I won't even speak of the older techniques used prior to 1630; suffice to say almost no one stored his wine in glass. The stuff was too damn expensive.
Since most fantasy novels seem to be set sometime between 1300 and 1600 the next time I see the tall cylindrical wine bottle in one I'll throw it at the author's head. <grin> All this from just trying to figure out why the hell bottles ended up being more or less standarized at 750ml. Answer: Most people think it is because that is about the amount a glass blower could get into a bottle when making it in one breath, but the real answer is, "Haven't a clue."
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-25 01:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-25 01:41 am (UTC)Barbara Hambly seems to consistently come up with made up histories that make sense. Well she was a history major...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-25 01:01 pm (UTC)I think that depends on your definition of "common" and on the locale. As someone who collected old bottles at one time, I'd say that in the U.S. in the latter half of the 19th century, bottles were pretty common
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-26 02:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-25 03:57 pm (UTC)2. Ask not why 750ml became a standard, ask rather why 1/5 of a gallon became a standard. 1/5 of a gallon is almost-but-not-quite-exactly 750ml.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-26 02:31 am (UTC)2. Yeah, but whatever the reason why that amount? Why not, say, a quart so that today we'd have around 1 liter or 950ml bottles being standard? The breath reason seems reasonable until one looks up the amount that a person can breath out (4-6 liters depending upon the person) while the average at rest breath is about half a liter. So it doesn't seem to have a real explanation value of why.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-26 05:29 pm (UTC)2. Good question - beats me. Most old traditional standards of measure are stupid. I wish we would just go to metric and get it over with.