Have you ever seen that dent under your wine bottle and wondered why it’s there? Some people believe that the concavity at the bottom of a wine bottle is a way to scam buyers, but this doesn’t make sense, as all wine bottles mention the quantity of wine on their labels and you can easily check if it is accurate or not. Is it a way to make the bottle look bigger, in an attempt to alter the buyers’ perception? Now that’s a tough one to crack. So, what is a punt and what’s it doing under your wine bottle?

What Is A Punt?

The wine bottle’s underbelly dent traces back to the era of hand-blown bottles, when achieving consistent perfection posed challenges. To give the bottles a stable base, the seam was pushed upwards in the base. This made it easier to prop the wine bottles erect and gave them additional structural integrity. While wine bottles are machine-made these days, the punt has stayed back as a part of their design. This might stem from the fact that the punt is believed to offer other advantages too:

Allows you to make a stylish pour: When there is a punt under your wine bottle, it also allows you to grasp and grip it better. Particularly for sommeliers, when they are pouring wine at the table, the punt allows them to hold the bottle in a steady fashion. If you want to serve wine like a sommelier, then place your thumb inside the punt and grip the bottle from its lower part with your fingers. Now lift the bottle and serve the wine!

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It traps sediments: In the case of very old and fine rare wines, the sediments tend to settle in a circular fashion around the punt and thus, they remain trapped in that dent while you pour the wine, unless they are disturbed by a jerky or abrupt movement. However, punt is effective in trapping the sediments only to a certain extent. Decanting your wine is a better way of separating the sediments than relying on the punt.

Offers resistance to high pressure: You may have observed that the indentation under bottles of Champagne and other sparkling wines is deeper than those in other bottles for other styles of wine. Believers maintain that a deeper punt fortifies the glass, granting it the ability to withstand pressure.

Now, let us bust a common myth about punts. It is a general misconception that a punt is an indicator of a wine’s quality. However, the quality of wine has nothing to do with a dent under a wine bottle. Indeed, numerous winemakers disapprove of indented wine bottles due to the additional glass required, contributing to higher bottle costs. So, if you find a bottle on the shelf that has no punt, don’t assume that it is of poor quality. It could simply be a matter of a wine producer cutting down production costs.

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