I had a rough experience last night while unpacking some wines and putting them in my cellar. The experience makes me wonder about different glass types used for bottles? Here’s the short story of what happened…
I pulled a bottle from the shipping box holding that bottle by the neck and I turned toward the cellar. While turning, with bottle at about chest height, bottle slipped from my grasp. My fault. I was in a hurry and obviously didn’t have a good hold on it. What happened next is kind of a blur. I’m pretty sure the bottle hit my tall speaker that was right in front of me. Maybe even hitting the speaker knocked it out of my hand? All I know is, as I tried to grab for it, the bottle shattered on the way down. It definitely did not wait to hit the floor. Of course, wine and glass shards went everywhere. It was like an explosion. I’ve dropped or broke bottles in the past in the 30 years I’ve been enjoying wine but never had a mess like this…
The front of me, pants and lower shirt was soaked. Wine was all over hardwood floor, walls/cabinets, plasma TV and electronics on stand below TV. On wine cellar, leather couches. Everywhere. And like I said previously, varying sizes of very sharp glass bits.
I quickly had to get cats out of the room and wet clothes off and into the washing machine. In the process I realized I was bleeding from a couple of cuts on one hand and a cut on my thigh. A piece of glass actually got through the fleece pants I was wearing. The good news is while a bit bloody, none of the cuts were a big deal. Just one more thing I had to deal with while I tried to clean up the mess.
I won’t go into clean-up details except to say it took some time to make sure I got all the wine and glass and myself cleaned up.
My question is how could that bottle have broken so easily? I’ve dropped bottles in the past that just bounced. Or if they broke it was not “explosive”. I guess the most likely reason is that the glass had a flaw. I know there have been issues with some bottles not being happy when pressurized by preservation systems. The other thing is what’s with all the small and very sharp shards? Like I said, typically when a bottle breaks it seems like the bottom comes off cleanly or there are just a few large pieces.
Sorry to hear about that. Liquid filled glass bottles can be an extremely dangerous thing. In my youth I worked at Coca Cola as a merchandiser. Back when they made 16oz glass bottles, not the 20oz plastic bottles. We always had to watch ourselves around those, they exploded all the time. I had a co-worker that almost lost an eye. Thank god for modern surgery, and he was lucky. Of course you expect this a little when it’s carbonated.
Anyhow, you should’ve snapped some photos. I’m sure you didn’t have time but that would have been a sight to see! I’ve dropped bottles before that fell to the floor from several feet and were fine too. Of course I’ll never forget losing a magnum in the parking lot at Botega in Napa because I was grabbing my friend’s son out of the back seat and his little foot knocked the bottle I set upright on the floor board out of the car and crashing down on the asphalt. ugh… still hurts. It was expensive.
I have a story of a strange breaking bottle that does not involve any dramatic explosion, only a fluke weakness in the glass. I was transferring wine from one partial case to another, and I accidentally tried to put a bottle into an occupied slot. The base of the bottle, which had a very deep punt, barely tapped the neck of the other bottle, and a circular crack popped out the top of the punt. The wine all poured out before I could upend the bottle. It taught me that the 3lb. war club bottles are not more durable than ones weighing a third as much.
Well, Greg…it’s those damn SQN btls…they are so flimsy!!!
You did wring out the fleece pants over a glass to try the wine…didn’t you?? TN??
Assuming it wasn’t a sparkling wine, it certainly sounds as if the glass had a flaw in it. I’ve never had
one “explode” on me…and even had some crash from waist high onto concrete and they survived…must have
hit just right, though.
Tom
when I worked at Dean & Deluca we had a fir floor in the Wine Hall that was remarkably forgiving when it came to dropped bottles. I can’t recall one ever breaking, they literally bounced. I have also encountered at least one cracked bottle where the bottom fell out when the cork was removed.
Thanks all! Yeah, it had to be a flawed/weakened bottle. The bottles from this winery are pretty substantial. Maybe not SQN heft, but more solid than many others. I guess I just needed a painful reminder to slow down and be a little more careful. A timely lesson as I’ll be moving soon and needing to unload/move/load the ~400 bottles in and out of the cellar… I WISH I would have taken a picture but at the time I was kind of panicking about all the glass and thinking about that very dark wine soaking into all that wood.
It’s possible to tap non-flawed bottles in the wrong spot and break them easily. Of course the punt is designed to be strong and the neck is naturally strong. Along the cylindrical section, maybe not so much. There’s a pretty wide variation in design detail and glass material.
Of course a defect would make what happened a lot more likely.
My friend has a floor corker with a nub that fits into the punt. I was helping him bottle and got a little surprise when a spring-loaded shard sliced deep into a finger as the bottle experienced a dramatic structural collapse. Turned out to be a flat bottomed bottle he’d saved. The rim around the bottom was sound enough, but not the area inside of it to withstand that moderate force on a small contact point. Finger wide cut, about 3/4 inch deep (upwards, as my hand was facing downward).
On a commercial line, I’ve had a bottle explode right next to me as it was filled. Obvious defect. There’s a reason there’s plexiglass around that area. Bottles break in the dumping phase on rare occasion, which has got to be due to a defect most of the time, at least. I guess that’s a good way to catch defective bottles.
*Re dumping: Empty bottles come in the cases neck-side down. You flip the case about flap width high, then let go of the flaps and the bottles drop out neck-side up. Then you push them column by column onto the bottling line.
I tapped a 93 Tokaij against another bottle over the summer and the Tokaij cracked, but did not shatter. No point in taking a chance though so I pulled to cork out at the end of the dinner. The change in pressure caused the crack to split and the contents flowed over our stone outdoor table. What happened next of course was that 2 of the more drunken wine lovers ignored the chance that there might be splinter of glass and they positioned themselves on the floor at the edge of the table and processed to catch the drips as they came of the table…surprised therefor to read that you did not dive to the floor and tried to imitate one if your cats stippling milk…
Funny! Don’t knock’em till you’ve tried them. I’m currently single and when at my place alone I wear what’s comfortable. And those pants are warm and comfortable. No need to try and impress myself…
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