Wine bottles have plenty of different colours… but why green is the most common?
Wine bottles’ colours are various, but green is the most common (in fact we use to say “bottle green”).
The red Burgundy is generally bottled in dark green bottles, whereas the dry white Burgundy prefers light green bottles. Ok, but why green?
The choice of green colour
UAt the base of a good wine preservation there is the protection from the light, so the colour of the bottle plays the most important role to extend the wine life and to avoid its oxidation.
A small quantity of oxygen is positive for the wine to allow the perfume to “open”, but if there is too much oxygen it can bring to negative results and the worsening of the wine quality.
People think that the colour of the bottles depends on the making process of the past, when the glass was produced with not perfectly pure elements that gave a green or brown colour to the glass.
Bottles colour and production areas
Bottles colour is often strictly tied with the wine production area. The flute, for instance, has a green colour in Alsace, but it is brown along the Rhine.
Another example is instead the “dead leaf” colour; it is a green-yellow typical of some Bordeaux bottles used for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that is rather spread in other parts of the world as well.
Anyway, regardless of the traditional and productive reasons, it is always better to use dark bottles, above all for that wines that have to be refined.
