There are always precise reasons behind a wine bottle’s color, it is never only for aesthetic purposes
Since wine began to be stored and sold in glass bottles, the dominant color was green, as it assumed a greenish color due to impurities that were present in the glass blown materials at the time. In particular, it was the iron components that gave the glass this color.
The evolution of the glass processing sector and studies on the packaging of wine bottles has contributed decisively to the stabilization of bottle colors and the choice of precise shades. A choice that today we can define as scientific.
Nowadays, most wine bottles have a greenish or brownish color for two reasons:
- Storing the wine: dark colors guarantee effective protection from sunlight. So putting the wine in bottles of certain colors allows a better conservation of the liquid.
- Aesthetics: Some studies have shown that green is a color considered particularly captivating by consumers and in some ways linked to tradition.
What are the different colors of wine bottles?
The color of wine bottles range from white-transparent, with minimal protection from sunlight, to dark brown and black, with maximum protection from sunlight. Much depends on the type of wine you intend to bottle. Generally speaking, we can say that lightly colored bottles are reserved for wines that do not require aging, while dark ones are reserved for long aging wines.
In particular:
– Transparent bottles are used to preserve young, fresh white wines to drink and which do not require a period of refinement or aging. Certainly, it is these bottles that guarantee the least protection from sunlight, but the short period of time in which they must be consumed usually prevents the degradation of the liquid. We can appreciate such a wine bottle color thanks to the Rieccolo Cerasuolo (Spring 2022)
– Green bottles, in all their different shades and nuances, are used to store white wines that require a period of aging and all of those red wines that mature, more or less briefly, in the bottle. In this case the dark bottle protects the wine from solar radiation.
– Brown or black bottles guarantee absolute protection from sunlight and, in most cases, are used for red wines that require a long aging process. This color is used for our Montepulciano and Pecorino bottles.
Even such a particular and seemingly obvious detail hides an interesting explanation.
