The quality of a wine can be determined by how deep the bottle’s punt is. The following content is accessible for members only, please sign in.

Originally, the punt was a way of preventing the jagged pontil mark—the point left over after a glass bottle was blown and shaped–from scratching the surface of a table, since the pontil mark would be folded up inside the bottle forming the punt. When mold-made wine bottles were introduced, the punt remained since it also added stability to the bottle when it was upright. Today, this is especially true of bottles under pressure, such as sparkling wine and Champagne bottles.