pressure (the glass strength came from
manufacturing with hot coal fires rather than
wood fires). And during the 18th century, the
wine bottle gradually evolved from a short,
stout flask to the familiar elongated bottle.
The bulky bottles were only used to convey
the wine from barrel to table or to hold it for a
day or two. When bottles had slimmed down
enough that they could lie on their sides, their
contents wetting the cork and preventing it
from shrinking and admitting air, then wine
could be stored in them for many years
without spoiling, and sometimes with great
improvements in flavor.
Pasteur and the Beginnings of a Scientific
Understanding of Wine In 1863 the French
Emperor Louis Napoleon asked the great
chemist Louis Pasteur to study the “maladies”
of wine. Three years later, Pasteur published
the landmark Etudes sur le vin. Pasteur and
others had already demonstrated that yeast is