Proper wine serving begins at the bottle. Wine bottles are so taken for granted that we rarely give much thought to their history or design. In addition to their different shapes, wine bottles also come in a variety of sizes. Most people have become accustomed to wines that come in standard bottles of 750 ml. The shape of wine bottles can communicate a great deal about the taste of the wine inside. Labels carry with them loads of classifications, harvest-types, town names, vineyard titles and producer idiosyncrasies. While these labels embody the wonderfully classic aesthetic associated with a good looking wine label, they almost always attract the average wine buyer.
Many wine producing areas developed unique wine bottle shapes that became the traditional bottle for wines of that region. As winemaking spread around the world, new wineries often adopted those traditional European bottle shapes in order to communicate with their consumers. As can be seen today, the wines come in bottles with square shoulders, sloping shoulders and tall with gently sloping sides and no shoulders. The look and feel of labels is extremely important, and tactical delights such as uncoated and textured papers, complex label shapes, foil stamping, sculptured embossing, the no-label look and other hi-tech, high-touch design techniques have become international trends.
