WINE AND SPIRITS BOTTLES
Perhaps the oldest use for glass bottles has been the storage and transport of alcohol. Some of the oldest bottles from the Middleton Place privy are wine and spirits bottles. Bottles made in the same dark green glass as the three pictured below left were used by the earliest colonists for various wines and spirits, and, although the bottle shapes have varied over the centuries, the tradition continues in the green wine bottles of the present day.
With the improvement of glassmaking techniques in the nineteenth century, alcohol bottles became more diverse and specialized. Although a simple cylindrical bottle ([Fig. 20]B) remained a standard for various types of spirits, flasks, like those later used by the South Carolina Dispensary (Fig. [22]B and C), became more and more common for whiskey. Beer bottles developed a distinctive shape ([Fig. 21]), and different shapes evolved for different types of wines. [Figure 20]A is a Bordeaux wine bottle, used since the early nineteenth century for the sauternes and clarets of the French Bordeaux district. The amber miniature shown in [Figure 20]D is a two-ounce sample bottle of the shape normally used for German Rhine wines. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most types of alcohol bottles could be purchased in miniature sizes for use in advertising and promotion.
Figure 20. Wine and spirits bottles. A. Turn-molded, probably c. 1870s. B. Three-piece mold, c. 1850-1880. C. Three-piece mold, sand pontil, c. 1820-1880. D. Rhine wine sample bottle, c. 1870s-1920s.