barton@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU (10/07/86)
Some friends and I were in an Italian restaurant recently and got to talking about the wine bottles with the woven basket attached to the bottom. Does anybody out here know of any reason for the basket other than aesthetic? Maybe a historic significance. Richard R. Barton Center for Supercomputing Research and Development University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ARPANET: barton%uicsrd@uiuc.arpa (or domain-wise barton@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu) CSNET: barton%uicsrd@uiuc.csnet USENET: ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsrd!barton
dgray@ihuxp.UUCP (Gray) (10/10/86)
> ... wine bottles with the woven basket attached to the bottom. > ... know of any reason for the basket other than aesthetic? > Maybe a historic significance. I would suspect that the main reason is the fact cardboard had not yet been used for boxes. :-).. If there were a basket with a loop/hoop in it, you could attach it to your mode of transportation. i.e. Horse, Donkey, etc. Daniel Gray AT&T Bell Labs ihuxp!dgray
pae@Shasta.UUCP (10/10/86)
>Some friends and I were in an Italian restaurant recently and got to >talking about the wine bottles with the woven basket attached to the >bottom. Does anybody out here know of any reason for the basket other >than aesthetic? Maybe a historic significance. Yes, there is a reason: If you removed the basket, you would quickly discover that the bottom of the bottle is round and will not stand up on its own. The bottles are called fiasci (sp?) (this is the origin of the word fiasco) and, I believe, have traditionally been used to bottle some of the lighter Chianti's. I have heard that they are becomming increasingly rare (probably due to cost).