Comments on: Rifle-shaped wine bottle

By: Fred Williams

Fred Williams — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:52:18 +0000

I have the same type bottle. Mine is 45″ high including the cork. I bought it a few years ago in a large wine store outside of Albany, NY. It contains Opici Red Table Wine. I also have the cardboard box it came in. I think it cost me about $ 50. They had about a dozen of them. Haven’t tried the wine. I keep it for decoration in my wine cellar. Opici bottles a low price Italian table wine that is sold at local stores by the gallon. At the same time I also bought a 32″ Princess Wine bottle Figurine. The boxes say “Old Rifle” reproduced in glass by Florentine glass masters and “Princess” reproduced in glass by Florentine glass masters. Then on the other side of the boxes it is written in Italian.
I have the same type bottle. Mine is 45″ high including the cork. I bought it a few years ago in a large wine store outside of Albany, NY. It contains Opici Red Table Wine. I also have the cardboard box it came in. I think it cost me about $ 50. They had about a dozen of them. Haven’t tried the wine. I keep it for decoration in my wine cellar. Opici bottles a low price Italian table wine that is sold at local stores by the gallon. At the same time I also bought a 32″ Princess Wine bottle Figurine. The boxes say “Old Rifle” reproduced in glass by Florentine glass masters and “Princess” reproduced in glass by Florentine glass masters. Then on the other side of the boxes it is written in Italian.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:17:22 +0000

I also have one of these rifle wine bottles, bought at a yard sale years ago, I would like to sell it but unable to fine whats it worth, tried many web sights with no luck, off hand I would say $50.00 too be a fair price.

By: Dave Tate

Dave Tate — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:46:41 +0000

As an aside, the original bottle you showed (bulbous straw-wrapped green glass, from the chianti region) is called a fiasco in Italian. It’s where we get the English word ‘flask’, and also the English term ‘fiasco’ for a spectacular failure.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=fiasco&searchmode=term

By: S. T.

S. T. — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:45:42 +0000

I have only two small pieces of information that might be of interest:

The mark that you see on the cork (INE, Marchio nazionale, Italia) was introducd in 1933 (RDL 1443/1933) and until 2006 all wine bottles exported from Italy to North America were required to carry it [1].

The Italian for “bottle shaped like a rifle” is “bottiglia a forma di fucile”. A web search on that key shows a few similarly shaped bottles (some of them empty), with people asking a few of tens of euros for them.

[1] DECRETO 8 Febbraio 2006: Abolizione dell’obbligo del marchio INE sulle partite di vino italiano destinate ai mercati del Nord America. Gazzetta Ufficiale N. 37 del 14 Febbraio 2006, Pag. 28.

By: Vladimir

Vladimir — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:48:05 +0000

Not sure if that counts, but we call vodka “wheat wine” in Russia sometimes:
http://shopalco.ru/published/publicdata/RU150GSHOP/attachments/SC/products_pictures/9b489c04c9c0c701bcb93b9210fafcf3_enl.jpg