Glass bottles have always given the impression that most of them are fragile, fragile and not easy to protect, so some people reject such glass bottles. Whether it is a glass bottle for drinking water in daily life or a glass bottle for holding things, they don't quite understand. For example, in the wine industry, in terms of outer packaging, it uses glass bottle packaging. This has also caused some controversy, but is the average glass bottle really the same as the glass wine bottle?
● Little known wine bottle knowledge
Wines from different producing areas have their own shapes of wine bottles. This is especially obvious in French wines, and most drinkers can recognize them at a glance. The glass of the wine bottle has some little-known secrets, and I will share it here to understand that this is not a simple matter.
First of all, most of the raw materials for making wine bottles are silica, commonly known as quartz sand, which has a very high melting point of 1700°C. Such a high melting point has a problem in production, that is, the cost is high. To this end, wine bottle makers add some other materials to lower its melting temperature, including sodium oxide and potassium oxide. After adding these materials, the melting point can be reduced to about 1400 ℃, but there will be a problem of water solubility, that is, glass is soluble in water, and must not be used as a storage wine.
● Add materials to stabilize glass properties
To this end, glass manufacturers add additional calcium oxide to eliminate the solubility of the glass, and then add a little aluminum oxide to stabilize the glass from crystallizing when it freezes. Therefore, in addition to quartz sand, the wine bottles we see are actually made of four kinds of materials. These materials are all mineral oxidants, each of which is cheap and common, and when mixed together, forms a glass with properties that are both insoluble in water and strong. But adding extra material to bottle glass doesn't end there. If you pay attention, some wine bottles will use transparent glass, which is more obvious in white wine. But most red wine bottles are green because the color absorbs UV light, preventing it from passing through the glass. Ultraviolet rays will age wine, which means that if the wine is placed in the sun, without these green glass to absorb ultraviolet rays, the wine cannot be stored for too long, shortening the storage time and life of the wine.
● The wine bottle must be made very strong
Those who have not been involved in winemaking probably will not know how important the firmness of the wine bottle is to the bottle. At present, most of the wines are bottled by mechanization, and the process is very streamlined; when the bottles are delivered to the winery, they are usually sealed in trays with adhesive tape. Wash the bottle. After workers dry the bottles, they feed them row by row into the bottle machine, which extends the throat into the bottle, fills the bottle with a semi-vacuum or inert gas, and then inserts the cork. During this process, the wine bottle has to bear a lot of pressure. If it explodes during this period, it will cause a very large loss. Because the machine enters the wine at a very high speed, it only takes a few seconds to fill a bottle. If the wine bottle explodes at this time , the machine will not stop for a while, and there will be a lot of wine sprayed all over the place. Workers also have to stop and reset the machine, and perform a thorough cleaning before it can be turned on again.
Therefore, the hardness and sturdiness of glass bottles are very important to wineries. Some wineries will install inspection machines, which will continuously irradiate each wine bottle with laser light before entering the machine to check whether there are cracks. Once found, the wine will be automatically removed. The bottle is taken away and not allowed to enter the machine. Obviously, glass wine bottles have their own characteristics. It is not only limited to the characteristics of glass bottles, the use of glass wine bottles can also improve the "face value" of wine, why not do it?