The Second Glass

When you order a bottle of wine in a restaurant, the waiter comes out and pours your glass by gripping that nifty little thumbhole (called a punt) at the bottom. It’s a common misconception that the punt, found in nearly all wine bottles, is for serving; the real origin is completely different.  Back in the day when glass wine bottles were first made, they had flat bottoms and were hand blown.  Since the bottle was blown through a straw, the finished product would have a protrusion where the straw was taken away from the bottle.  This did not bode well with consumers since the protrusion (called a pontil) scratched tables and made the bottles rock and spill.  The solution: glass blowers pushed the pontil up into the bottle, problem solved.

When the molded glass bottles came along they kept the punt because it gave bottles more stability.  More importantly, it was kept in Champagne bottles to increase the surface area of the bottle to better diffuse the pressure created by dissolved CO2.  Before that innovation, early Champagne makers had to worry about exploding bottles and flying shrapnel.