Bottles made from Black Glass

[Al B.]

In Tom's recent tasting note on the 1994, he mentioned the "impossibly dark glass" he was decanting his wine from. This topic of glass choice for port bottles was raised with a couple of producers during our recent trip to the Douro.

The answer and justification for using such dark glass was that it is necessary to protect the wine from spoilage by light while it is developing and maturing in the bottle.

I must say, I found this answer disappointing. I store my wines in professional storage conditions, usually in the light proof Original Wooden Case or else in the equally light proof Original Cardboard Carton. My wines which are not stored professionally are in a Eurocave which is dark inside when the door is closed.

I'm pretty sure that no-one who cares enough to spend £20+ to buy a bottle of VP would know so little as to store the wine somewhere it would be spoiled by light. If a bottle did happen to be stored somewhere it would be exposed to light, then surely its much more likely that the contents of the bottle would be spoiled through heat damage before being spoiled through light damage. Poor storage at a retail outlet if not sold through a specialist wine merchant might also be a major risk to the wine, but is potential exposure to light really a problem or is black glass merely a fashion statement by some producers?

Here and now, I would like to say to any and all producers who read this board, if you use black glass then please reconsider your use of it. Black glass is such a pain in the neck for us consumers. It means we can't check fill levels easily, we can't see the sediment in the bottle as we decant and we can't see any branding there may be on the cork of unlabelled bottles. Your wines from the 40's, 50's and 60's didn't spoil in standard green or brown bottles so what makes you think that your wines from the 2000's will? If you have research that shows it is essential to bottle the wines in black glass then please share it with us (via Roy, if you prefer) so that at least we can put our frustrations into the context of a better drinking experience.

But remember, the Cavadinha '89 that I bought from Makro 2 weeks ago came in a pale green and transparent bottle and that wine was superb.

Alex

[Stuart Chatfield]

Agree with all this, totally. I can back it by lots of evidence as I've had a number of identical vintages: one from a black Oporto bottle and one from a UK green Bdx-style bottle. As (even when from auction ) I only buy with good provenance I can say that as long as the storage is good it makes no difference to the wine.

Well, there's one difference of course - the green ones are better for checking fills, decanting etc.

What matters is provenance - hence an old well-stored green-bottle auction buy is better than a black one that may have been in a window or under lights for its life in a shop!

However, let's leave the "white" colourless glass for Sauternes, I don't think it's quite the thing for Port. I'm going green (well in this vote anyway!) By green I mean the red-wine style.

(I've been very lazily waiting for someone to organise this poll - well done)

[Tom Archer]

I can't recall anyone complaining that an old pale green bottle had been 'light struck' - and it certainly isn't normal for bottles to be cellared in well illuminated places. Whites seem to be more vulnerable to light, yet they get put in pale bottles..

The bottle makers have some clever technologies these days, including the ability to put a coloured plastic coating over the outside of the bottle - look at the alcopops.

A bottle could be made in light glass and then given a dark film coating that covered all bar the neck...

Tom

[Mario Ferreira]

Alex -

please note official legislation from IVDP requires dark glass bottles to be used at the bottling line for VP.

-Mário-

[Derek T.]

I voted option 2

I don't like black glass for all the reasons described above. If I had to guess the real reason why most of the the shippers are using it it would be that there grey suits in the marketing department have told them it looks cool :?

I have to say that I don't really like the light green bottles that most others seem to be voting for. I don't really know why this is, all I know is that I take more comfort in having to strain my eyes to see through the neck.

Derek

[Al B.]

A question for Mario

Do you know when the rule was introduced that requires VP to be bottled in dark glass?

I wonder, because the bottle of 1989 Cavadinha that I drank recently was clearly Oporto bottled in 1991 and was bottled in dark glass - just dark green and not impenetrable black.

Thanks

Alex

[Tom Archer]

Do the rules simply say 'dark glass' - which could be satisfied by almost any brown or green bottle - or do they specify the level of obscuration?

- Are these rules on the net?

Tom

[Mario Ferreira]

Do you know when the rule was introduced that requires VP to be bottled in dark glass?

I've read it on "my english" translation of the New Legislation that was printed in May-2005 in "Diário da República", the Portuguese Government's official gazette.

Do the rules simply say 'dark glass' - which could be satisfied by almost any brown or green bottle - or do they specify the level of obscuration?

I have no idea on whether dark brown or dark green may be used for VP !!!

/MF/

[Andy Velebil]

I prefer option #2. Dow uses those black bottles, and even with a powerful flashlight from work, I had a hard time seeing into the main bottle.

I get around the sediment issue by filtering through unbleached cheese cloth. This catched all the sediment and I don't have to worry about watching for it.

There are studies on how different glass affects the liquid inside. I was at a seminar a few years ago at Budweiser beer and they spoke about the same issue. Studies had proved the lighter the color of glass the faster the contents inside can deteriorate. This occured even under the florecent lights of a retail store. Unfortunitly, not one of my favorite beer brands so I didn't think to keep the paperwork.

Black bottles have been used for a long time by Port companies. Looking at some old bottles I have (1955 Ferreira and 1966 Noval National) both are black glass, and difficult to see through even when empty.

Besides I've seen the same bottles of wine sitting on store shelves for years under bright lights. So, I'd rather have the dark bottles and get a little bit more protection.

[Roy Hersh]

Oporto bottling of Vintage Port has been in dark black (opaque) bottles going back to the 1800s and earlier (remember the glass Port bottle museum we saw). To my knowledge, only in 1945 was another color of glass used for Oporto bottled VPs and in that year, the color was brown ... due to shortages of black glass stemming from the war efforts.

Obviously in the UK, they felt that green worked just fine and maybe it was because it was less expensive to use than the dark black ones. Just kidding. I agree with Andy about the sediment issue, but also do empathize with the rest of the gang that would like to be able to determine the ullage when looking inside a Port bottle.

There is definitive scientific proof about the effects of light and especially sunlight on wine, including red wine. Colored glass reduces this effect and most beverage bottlers use various shades of green, brown and black (some clear too, of course).

I voted for option number two, because I believe that it is very plausible to protect the wine from light/sunlight while at the same time using a charcoal black (NOT opaque) bottle that can be seen through when looking closely. This would be the best answer and provide us all a way to see the fill level of the Port within. Just my two cents, your mileage may vary.

[Richard Henderson]

I voted for option 3 for the same reasons Roy voted for 2. I think it is plausible to have a dark green bottle, protect the wine from light and still be able to see the wine.

[Jay Powers]

I voted for number three, green glass would be nice and easy to see through, and would add some protection as well. A couple of ideas on this topic:

1. Why not cover the bottle in paper, then no light gets through at all, better even than black glass. The paper may molder away in time (like labels do), but that would just be a sign of a properly stored port?

2. What part of the spectrum is supposedly causing the damage to the wine? What you really want is the color glass that blocks the wavelength of light that causes the damage. In chemistry labs, brown glass is almost exclusively used for light sensitive chemicals (those which are stored in glass anyways) and is very effective. So maybe the bottles should be brown?

Jay

[Justin K]

I voted for no. 3 for the obvious help when decanting. Roy mentioned one off bottling using brown bottles but Findlaters in Dublin used brown as their standard colour in the 50's and I think I have some Calem 1960 in brown bottles, bottler unknown. Brown may look awful but you can see through them with a little effort.

[Derek T.]

I had a bottle of Osborne 20 yr old earlier this year and I am sure it was in a brown bottle. I agree it does look awfull, but so was the Osborne 20 yr old :?

Derek

[Roy Hersh]

The "one off" I was talking about was an Oporto bottling ... the 1945s, none of which (to my knowledge) were done in anything but brown bottles.

I know that quite a few other countries have bottled Vintage Port and Colheitas in brown glass. It reminds me of root beer though and I'd prefer green to brown ... but neither of them to charcoal black that can easily be seen through, when held to a light source.

[Tom Archer]

When bottling the 45's, the shippers' normal suppliers were unable to deliver, so they had to buy brown bottles that were normally made for the Sherry trade.

The two '47's in my cellar have similar glass, but my F48 is in black...

I think the shippers do themselves no favours by putting VP's into bottles that do not readily reveal the level when held up to the light.

Reducing the light by 95% is OK, - going the extra mile is counter- productive

Tom

[Steven Kooij]

Could it be that tradition plays a role here? Port as we know it is an English "invention" (yes, very broad generalisation I know). When glass bottles were "reinvented", the glass in the UK would be melted over a coal fire, which would cause the glass to turn black - the use of wood was prohibited by law. There was no such law in France, and bottles could be made more transparent there. If Port used to be bottled in "black" bottles, it should still be bottled in them...as Mosel and Rhine wines were bottled in green and brown glass bottles...
(I'm writing this from memory, so I could be mistaken)

It is incorrect that only the '45 Vintage was bottled in non-black glass. Many a Niepoort Vintage Port (whose VPs were ALWAYS bottled in Portugal) can be found in green and blueish green bottles...and at least up to the '91 Vintage.

[Al B.]

I think I can officially declare the poll as closed now, it having run for a week. For those who read the forum but have not participated in the poll, the results were:

In favour of opaque black glass: 1
In favour of dark glass, transparent with difficulty: 8
In favour of "red wine bottle" style glass: 10

Thanks for all those who voted or contributed to the debate. This is a matter close to my heart because there is nothing that irritates me more than decanting into a jug or decanter and then having to decant again when I realise that I slopped some sediment out of the bottle either because I missed it coming out of the neck or because my hand shook / I sneezed from cellar dust at the vital moment.

I still love it when I take a bottle out to open and find that I can see through the glass. Please give me more green 1989 Cavadinha bottles and fewer black Warre '83 bottles!

Or else I need to become serioulsy rich so that I can employ my own, full-time sommelier...

Alex

[Mario Ferreira]

[...] there is nothing that irritates me more than decanting into a jug or decanter and then having to decant again when I realise that I slopped some sediment out of the bottle either because I missed it coming out of the neck or because my hand shook / I sneezed from cellar dust at the vital moment. [...]

Hi Alex - there's one procedure that is actually very good on preventing your aforementioned issue to happen !! - I learned it from George Sandeman :)

While decanting you should have a few empty glasses nearby and when you think the sediment is about to come out, you stop to poor into the decanter and move it into the glasses then. Keep the bottle horizontally and use the glasses one by one. When finished you'll then notice the wine of the first glasses are actually good to be added into the Decanter but the wine of the later glasses will have some sediment you may decide to avoid.

(I'm not very sure either my english here is written in a comprehensible way, though). :)

This procedure actually works pretty well.

[Andy Velebil]

Hey Mario,

How's the trip going?

BTW, Your English is just fine