Did You Know? The Cognac Bottle

In real terms nobody really knows when cognacs were first put into bottles. The first recorded cognacs existed around 1540, but we only know of them being sold in barrels.

About 200 years later, cognacs were being sold from barrels and transferred into small convenient sized hand blown bottles of around 40-50cl. At around this time, it was discovered that some cognacs were best removed from the barrel and stored in glass bottles, which prevented them from changing their individual characteristics. To prevent any deterioration in the cognac when it was stored in glass, it was necessary for the bottle to be sealed with a cork and waxed over the top to prevent the ingress of air. To minimise the number of bottles that needed sealing, large bottles were made which would hold sometimes as much as 3-4 litres. Cognacs stored in these large bottles were often transferred to smaller bottles, which could be easily carried around before they were sold,

By around 1800, glass producers were making hand blown bottles by the thousands. Although there were standard sizes, no two bottles were the same and many had big bell bottoms, which when the hot glass was pressed to the table often meant that the bottle would have a distinctive lean to the side. The bottles of this period had grown to around 90cl and the need for standardisation created the imperial measure for liquids. Most of the cognac houses were owned by English or Irish families, so this was easier for the buyers of the brandies to understand.

Imperial brandy measures were finally changed in 1956, when metric units were introduced to standardise the bottle and to enable easier price comparison of the contents. Today cognac bottles come in sizes of 35cl, 50cl, 70cl, 75cl (America),100cl & 150cl.