delightfully bubbly by transferring it from
barrel to bottles before it had finished
fermenting. And a few decades later, the
English developed port in the effort to
stabilize strong red wines during their sea
journey from Portugal. The shippers added
distilled alcohol to the wines to prevent
spoilage, and thus discovered the pleasures of
fortified sweet red wines.
Bottles and Corks The 17th and 18th centuries
brought two major innovations that once again
made it possible to age wines for many years,
a possibility that had disappeared when the
impermeable amphora was replaced by wood
barrels. These momentous developments were
slim bottles and cork stoppers! The English
discovery of sparkling Champagne depended
on the fact that they had begun plugging bottle
necks with compressible gas-tight cork
instead of cloth, and that they had especially
strong bottles that could withstand the inner