Heavy Weights

Not the wine, the wine bottles.

Google heavy bottles and you'll see articles from people like Tim Atkin and from Decanter deploring the amount of glass used in some bottles, presumably with the intention that people will assume that weight is directly proportional to quality (similar to the long time Mondavi credo that gravitas comes with oak, regardless of the wine).

I have hit a couple of heavy weight bottles (which, I might mention, cost us more than many because the shipping costs are included in the seller's cost, then marked up, and THEN, our provincial liquor monopoly charges a surcharge based on that number, which includes the shipping for those heavy bottles).

I thought we'd hit a big one when we opened a 2007 Boekenhoutskloof Syrah that was a poretty darned heavy bottle. Empty, it weighed 1,062 grams (or 2.34 pounds) empty.

I thought that was big until I had a Rioja I wasn't familiar with earlier this week, an Ysios.

You really should look at the winery:



This puppy, empty, weighs 1.2 kg. (2.64 lbs.)

Given that the British wine industry says that a standard average weight is 500 g, this bottle weighs 5 times what a normal bottle does, empty.

Does anyone else have a bottle they think would feature in a list of heavyweights? Let's say anything at 2.2 lbs./1 kg are eligible.

[Jenise]

That building looks like it's made out of Legos.

I don't own a small scale so I can't 'weigh in' on which bottles I've had that were so heavy, but I do recall in the not-too-distant past opening a bottle at home about which I remember thinking it weighed at least twice any other bottle I could remember holding. None left in my cellar now to enter into that contest.

A question to ask in your survey would be: is that a turn-on, or a turn-off? To me, the latter, and it raises suspicions. It strikes me as a over-compensation of a particularly male, or Napoleonic, sort. At the very least, those bottles are certainly not chosen with the cognoscenti in mind.

At the very least, those bottles are certainly not chosen with the cognoscenti in mind.

No, clearly they are calculated to appeal to the same mentality that would pay big bucks for a bottle of horse pee if the Wine Speculator gave it 100 points.

But then packaging is THE criterion for selling anything, not quality, sadly. Take a look at any new car (well, I guess there are outliers or they'd never sell and Pontiac Aztecs or Scions or Nissan Cubes)

I'll post a note on the wine later on - it wasn't a style that particularly attracts me.

[David M. Bueker]

The Argentinian venture Tikal had incredibly heavy bottles at one time. No idea if they still do, but back then an empty weighed nearly 2.5 lbs.

I am generally wary of heavy bottles, but a few wines I really like (e.g. Shafer Hillside Select) come in bruiser bottles.

I haven't weighed the bottles but both Alysian Wines and Scott Paul Wine Cellars have rather heavy bottles with a deep punt. I would prefer lighter-weight bottles. What gripes me is the waxed capsules some wineries use that are hard to open due to the thickness and hardness of the wax.

Those “bruiser bottles” besides being “heavy”, and having a “deep punt” are usually so dark it’s hard to tell when they are empty!.

Salute