🍷 Punt (bottle)

A punt (kick-up, the dimple in the base of a bottle) is the inward dip in the bottom of a wine bottle. Turn the bottle over and you see a dome-shaped hollow. Its depth varies, from almost flat to very deep, and in sparkling wine bottles it is one of the marks of a model.

The Saverglass catalogue gives figures for sparkling wine. In its 75 cl Champenoise Standard the punt is 30 millimetres deep. In the square-based Terroir it is deeper, 40, and in the 3-litre Jeroboam it reaches 50. In the largest bottle a small push-out sits inside the punt. The weight rises too: 900 grams, 950 and 2,900.

A Champagne bottle has to hold 5 to 6 bar, about three times the pressure in a car tyre. Bottles are made green, sometimes brown, to limit UV. There is more on colour and light in bottle glass.

The base is also a signature. Since 2019 Verallia has put a V and a country letter under bottles and jars from its 32 plants in 10 countries. When Champagne rests, the sediment gathers not in the dip but in the neck: bottles are tilted neck-down, taking 4 to 6 weeks by hand and about a week by machine. So the punt in a wine bottle for sparkling wine is a dimension the maker lists in its catalogue.

A deep punt does not mean a better wine: the size of the dimple tells you nothing reliable about quality. Why it exists is less settled. One explanation goes back to hand-blown glass, where the pontil rod left a mark and the dent let the bottle stand steady. Another suggests the deep punt gave a thumb grip when sparkling bottles were turned by hand on a riddling rack, though that is only a theory.