The gold wire mesh on a bottle of Rioja, the distinctive relief on a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, the abnormally transparent, crown-less bottle of Louie's Champagne Louis Roederer Cristal... Some pot-bellied bottles of Chianti wrapped in straw baskets... ... there are millions of wines on the market, and some of them are designed to go against the grain? . These designs are just so you can see it in the numerous wine! ? Apparently not, let's take a look at the secret behind their unique design!

Bocaster vineyard relief wine bottle

When we choose wine, occasionally see some wine bottles wrapped with gold wire mesh, as if to put on a bottle of“Gold thread clothing.”. These“Gold vests” look magnificent, as if to announce the noble status of wine, but in fact, it appears to be the original purpose of anti-counterfeiting, rather than just beautiful.

The practice of dressing a wine in a“Witch coat” was born in the Rioja region of Spain. 1858, the Spanish Marques de Riscal founded his eponymous chateau in Rioja, Marques de Riscal.

View of Marquis de Riegel

Before founding the chateau, the Marquis de Riegel went to Bordeaux to learn how to make wine. After the establishment of the chateau, he tried to make wine using some traditional French Rioja, for example, wine aged in French oak barrels. The resulting wine was a huge success and was favored by the Spanish king's Alfonso XII of Spain, Alfonso XII.

For a time, the Marquis de Riegel wine has become a hot hot bread, the market has begun to appear a lot of counterfeit goods. To prevent counterfeiting, wineries began to use gold-mesh bottles in the early 20th century. As soon as the wine was opened, the gold-mesh was destroyed, making it difficult for the bottles to be refilled.

The invention was immediately embraced by many wineries producing high-quality Rioja, which used the golden mesh to protect their wines, that's why at the time the golden wire was almost always associated with high-quality wine.

Nowadays, most high-end wines have more advanced anti-counterfeiting methods. The golden wire has lost its original meaning, but some wineries still choose to use it on their high-quality wines, it's more of a respect for tradition and continuity.

In addition, the golden mesh design has also been used outside Rioja for wines from other countries and regions, such as E. Guigal La Mouline, Cote Rotie, France, from the Rhone Valley, its bottles were covered with a golden mesh.

 The Guigal family

The traditional Chiantia bottle, called“Fiasco” in Italian, has a distinctive shape, with a tapered top, a large ball and a straw basket wrapped around the bottom, sometimes called“Pot belly.”. Although rare these days, the bottle has historically been the hallmark of Chianti wines.

The origin of the Chiantia bottle is not known, but according to 14th-century documents, a pot-bellied bottle encased in a basket of Chiantia was already a common wine container in Tuscany. At that time, glass-blowing technology was not yet mature, and blowing the bottom of a glass bottle into a ball could save time and cost, a layer of woven fabric wrapped around the outside helps keep the bottom of the bottle firm and protects the bottle during transport.

The shape of the straw-woven bottles used for wine at first was not uniform. Over time, the craft of making the bottles has improved, and as Chianti wines have become more and more popular on the international market, the demand of transporting wine with straw-woven bottle is also increasing, the size of straw-woven bottle is gradually fixed, the shape is more and more uniform, straw-woven bottle has gradually become the symbol of Chianti wine.

Later, due to a variety of reasons, Chianti wine quality decline in the international reputation has been affected, straw bottle for a time became a symbol of low-end Chianti wine.

In the 1870s, to avoid the appearance of straw bottle people misunderstand the poor quality of the wine in its container, the bottle shape also gradually out of the wine market, consorzio Vino Chianti Classico banned the bottle in the classic Chianti Classico region in the 1980s. Today, producers of Khyan's emperor wine are using more of the world-famous Bordeaux bottles, and traditional straw bottles are becoming increasingly rare.