🍷 Wine bottle

A wine bottle is a glass container in which wine is sold and stored. The most common sizes are 0.75 litres and 375 ml. In the EU, still wine between 100 ml and 1.5 litres may be sold only in eight set sizes. Glass is inert and gives superior protection against gases and vapours, so it remains the preferred packaging for wine; its drawbacks are weight and fragility.

Coloured glass protects wine from light. Clear bottles let through up to about 35 percent of the harmful ultraviolet and violet light, bluish-green ones up to about 8 percent, light amber ones about 1 percent and dark amber ones 0.2 percent. White wine in clear or bluish-green glass can therefore develop a light-struck fault within a few days on a lit shelf.

Some bottle shapes are reserved by EU law for particular wines. The flattened, round-bellied, short-necked Bocksbeutel is reserved for wines such as those of Franconia in Germany, and the tall, slim, long-necked Flûte d'Alsace for wines such as Alsace.

The bottle can be replaced by other packaging, for example a can or a bag-in-box, but glass remains the main choice.