Sunday, September 21, 2008

Local bottles

The three bottles in this photo have the same capacity, 50 centiliters, which is two-thirds that of an ordinary wine bottle. As you can see, I often use a fashionable tall and thin version of this bottle for my walnut wine, but the transparent glass has the disadvantage of revealing stains. This modern bottle, popular in France for prestigious samples of white and rosé wines, has an empty weight of about 450 grams.

The central bottle in the photo is a famous pot de Lyon [Lyon flagon]: the recipient used for ages in restaurants in the illustrious gastronomical city as a table flask for wine drawn from casks.

On the left, you see an ancient specimen of a pot de Lyon that I unearthed at Gamone last Friday, by chance, following heavy rain that had washed away the soil that had concealed the bottle for a couple of centuries. The thick green glass of this antique bottle weighs just over a kilo: that's to say, well over twice the weight of its modern descendant.

No comments:

Post a Comment