You may have experienced it when shopping for a bottle of wine. You lift the bottle to look more closely at the label and you notice how heavy it is relative to other bottles of wine. And immediately you equate this substantial bottle with high quality. But, is it really?

There is no doubt that weight influences quality. And, a high quality product deserves high-quality packaging. Heavy just seems to feel good. Right!

Well, according to wine servers in restaurants, a heavy bottle is a pain to carry, open and pour.

Also, these heavier bottles tend to be slightly larger than a standard bottle, so they often don’t always fit in a standard wine rack.

And don’t forget that a heavier bottle means a case of that wine is going to be significantly heavier. And that adds to the shipping cost.

So, shouldn’t we really be paying more attention to the quality of wine inside the bottle than the bottle itself? In most cases, the bottle weight really doesn’t mean anything. The one exception is for sparkling wine. A thicker bottle is necessary to handle the high pressure inside the bottle. Otherwise, a heavy bottle is just a packaging option that the winemaker is using.

Then, there’s that ‘dimple’ in the bottle of wine. What’s up with that? Well, we’ll get into that next time. But for now, Cheers!