Georgian wine in clay vessels

I saw these at the Georgian Pavilion at last year's Wine Fair. I suppose they underlined the long history of wine making in Georgia. These small clay vessels, shaped like amphorae of ancient times emphasizes that wine was produces there before glass bottles became an everyday utensil. The fact that some wine was still fermented in clay vessels (see earlier blog) also bore testament to their longstanding traditions. After all, was not the water-turned-into-wine (from the account of the wedding at Cana in St John's Gospel) drawn from stoneware jars which are basically larger versions of something like these?

Glass bottles stopped with cork came into common use probably in the late 17th and early 18th century, with a description of a contraption which we would probably call a corkscrew being described in 1681. Wines were generally shipped in bulk for ageing and bottling by the importer or merchant until very recently. Michael Broadbent noted that even in his early days in the wine trade a lot of knowledge was expected in relation to handling and bottling bulk wine. "Mis en bouteille en domaine /au chateau" is a relatively recent phenomenum even for fine wines. BTW, the word butler is derived from the French "bouteille" (bottle) and was the chief male servant in a household, who would be entrusted with the task of looking after and serving the wines in aristocratic homes.