How to value a bottle of wine - feel the depth of its dimple
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It's useful to be able to value a bottle of wine.
For example,
- A friend buys you a bottle of wine as a gift and you want to know how much it cost. Aaargh!
- At a party, you have to choose which bottle of wine to open. Nightmare!
Here's a handy trick. Feel the depth of the dimple at the bottom of it. The more expensive the bottle, the deeper its dimple will tend to be.
Is this true?
I mentioned this fact to some friends. They didn't believe me.
I looked to the internet for some proof. |
I couldn't find any.
- Some 'expert' websites say that it is an urban myth.
- Others mention the fact but in a doubting kind of way, saying "some people believe that dimple depth is a guide to quality"
What use is that to someone hovering over the booze table at a party?
Someone needs to turn this idle chit-chat into fact.
Someone needs to go to the supermarket with a depth gauge and a notepad
I'll do it.
This depth gauge took a while to make
The tiniest deviation in the accuracy of the device would have knackered the results. There was no room for error.
Step 2 was to grow a beard like Dave Gorman's
Look at me. I'm a wacky studenty genius.
I started from the right-hand side and made sure I didn’t skip any
Keep your eye on the ball, Squirrel. No room for parallax errors.
After I’d measured about 50 bottles, I started feeling self-conscious.
Let’s go home and plot a graph
There’s loads of scatter there. Don't worry. I did a proper statistical analysis. It’s 99.999% certain that there’s a relationship.
Bottles less than £5 have shallow dimples and bottles above £5 have deep dimples. £5 bottles are a minefield.
And here’s your handy equation
Price of bottle = (Dimple depth in mm + £3.49) / 4.3144
Impressive, eh?
The equation is for red wine. White wine is about a pound cheaper, isn’t it?
Which can be expressed thus.
Price of bottle = (Dimple depth in mm + £3.49) / 4.3144 - about a pound
Obviously for really expensive bottles of wine (above £10) the equation can't be assumed to be true. But no-one takes that kind of wine to parties anyway.
A fact is born. Tell your friends
Some more dimple-related facts
After all that excitement, your head will be spinning with dimple-related questions. Listen to me: CALM DOWN. We don't want you having a panic attack.
What is the proper name for the dimples?
Wine people call them punts (and sometimes kick-ups). I prefer not to use the "P" word, and call them dimples like everyone else does.
What are the dimples for?
Wine experts can’t agree what punts are for. Here are some of the theories:
- They are a historical remnant of old-fashioned glass-blowing techniques
- They once had the function of making the bottle less likely to be topple over. A bottle designed with a flat bottom only needs a small imperfection to make it unstable. In the past, it may have been safer to give the bottle a dimple to allow for a margin of error.
- They once had (and may still have) the function of strengthening the bottle, particularly useful in the case of sparkling wines
- They allow bottles of sparkling wine to be turned upside-down and then stacked, which is very useful apparently
- They allow you to pour wine in that fancy way that waiters sometimes do
- They can make the bottle look bigger
- They help to sell wine to people who have until now taken this theory on blind faith
- In aged wines, sediment deposits at the bottom, which the punt can help to consolidate. In other wines, the punt is for show. (Thanks to John Lavery and Sean Slattery for piping up with this one).
Depth gauge auctioned on Ebay!
The depth gauge was auctioned on Ebay. It fetched £2.70.
Are you an interviewer?
I am available for interviews, no matter how poor your publication is. Ideally I'd like Scientific American or Nature.
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