Oil is a wonderful necessity in the kitchen, but it's always plagued with those pesky drippings that waste oil and make a big ol' mess.

However, Noro (a Barcelona-based designer) has cooked up a new bottle system called Verte, which offers a two-lip cap system, like you can see above. The oil or liquid pours from the inner lip, and excess is caught by the outer lip. But don't let it steal your hearts just yet -- it's only in the design stage right now, and there's a serious downside to this.

Unless you keep your bottles in a well-sealed area, or they come with tops, you'll soon have a mess on your hands. The bottle might stay clean, but that space between the lips will get filthy, and who wants oil to be recycled by passing through a dirty and dusty second lip? The oil would remain on that lip, dust would cling to it in no time, and there goes your perfect system.

[via Serious Eats]

Every good beer drinker knows drinking out of the bottle is a no-no (Busch Light drinkers excluded). The only way to get the full nose and aroma is to pour that bottled brew into the proper glassware.

Still, sometimes having your buddy turn to you and ask, "Don't you want a glass for that?" can be equally annoying. Beer snobbery has become as growing a concern to the casual beer drinker almost as much as seasonal beer food pairings have been worrying the aforementioned beer snob.

Well, finally someone has come up with a solution. Fred & Friends has produced the Hopside Down beer glass. This glassware is designed to look like a longneck beer bottle, but turned upside-down with the bottom sliced off. The effect: The look of drinking out of a bottle but leaving an open air environment to let your nose enjoy all those precious hop and malt scents.

I haven't actually tried these glasses yet, so I can't vouch for their quality, but they certainly look cool. (And people who drink beer always do it to look cool!)

[via Al Dente]

As with everything else these days, the price of glass is going up. Some wine and beer bottlers have already switched to less glass-intensive bottles and a French champagne maker is experimenting with the same idea.

Mumm, is experimenting with bottles that are 65 grams lighter than regular champagne bottles (which are about twice as heavy as wine bottles), in an attempt to cut down on costs. The company is currently storing the test bottles for two years to make sure the thinner glass can withstand the pressure that is produced by the bubbly. If they do determine to use these lighter bottles, Mumm will also have to get approval from Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, the trade association that represents grape growers and champagne producers.

If the bottles survive and the CIVC approves the change, we'll be seeing these new, thinner champagne bottles around 2010. The question is, if Mumm gets CIVC approval, will other champagne bottlers will be quick to follow?

[Via the Guardian]

Getting the cork out of a bottle of champagne can be a challenge, especially if you don't have the bubbly stuff enough to actually practice. If the bottle has (accidentally) had a shake or two, the cork could fly out with enough force to break one of your flutes - and what would you use to serve your champagne, then?

Fortunately, Dv. Vino has a very helpful guide to opening champagne on his site, complete with pictures that will give you an idea of what you're aiming for. First, he covers how to "look like an aggressive moron" - in other words, he tells you what to avoid doing - before really telling you how to smoothly pop the cork out like a sommelier (place your hand over the cork as you gently twist, as Jonathan mentioned the other day) and how to use a champagne saber to look really slick at a party.

My own method involves putting a thin dishtowel on top of the bottle. Not only does it help me to keep a grip on the cork as I work it out, but it prevents flyaways and will catch any bubbly that decides to fizz its way out of the bottle.

When the first organic wines came out, there was something of a hippie stigma attached to them. The method of growing the grapes was more important than the finished product and, as a result, the wines really couldn't compare to the more traditionally produced vintages. But everyday consumers and connoisseurs alike are no longer turning up their noses at organic wines because there are excellent ones available now. More vineyards are making them and the wines are getting better all the time. The reason for the turn towards organic wine is that consumers' demand for organic products is growing in scope, stretching beyond produce. Their demand means that the market is bigger - the supermarket Sainsbury's reports over 400% growth in the sale of organic wine in the last year - and to fill it, more organic wine is being produced.

Of course, as Jonathan Ray (The Daily Telegraph wine expert) points out, "good wine is good wine" and some of the very best are not organic. But if organic is a criteria that is important to you, for reason, it's nice to know that there a good wine options and that the number of them is growing all the time.

Faced with the prospect of revolutionary solar-powered thin-film technology, we can think of only one thing: beer. The folks at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed micrometer-thin solar cells and heating/cooling devices that could be attached to all kinds of surfaces, including walls, cars or bottles. These would be way less cumbersome than the self-cooling beer cans I posted about a few months back. The solar powered thin films would also require no moving parts. In their press releases, the Rensselaer researchers mention self cooling soda bottles, but we know what they're thinking...

[Via SCI FI Tech and vnunet]

In the UK, Coca-Cola is bottling its soda in unique bottles in honor of the World Cup. Instead of the usual decorated bottle caps or customized labels, the bottles are round, like miniature soccer balls. They hold 250ml, or about 8-ounces of liquid, and are available in both regular and diet. Of course, now that England is out of the Cup, there's no telling how long they'll remain on store shelves.

Since the packaging plant has been outfitted with new equipment to handle the special bottles, it is possible that more special-edition bottles will be released in the future, for Coke and its other brands, like Fanta.

 

Brewers in Europe may soon have to provide complete lists off ingredients on their beer bottles, according to a recent BBC News story. The European Commission hopes to have reworked many labeling standards, including those for alcoholic beverages, by the end of the year. While this might not be a big deal to breweries in Germany, where beer can legally only contain water, hops (right), yeast and malted barley or wheat, plenty of other breweries use chemicals that, while safe, may sound less than appealing to consumers. Propylene glycol alginate, for example, is a chemical derived from algae, used to maintain a thicker head on a beer. Personally, I'd be glad to know a little more about what else is in my beer. I'm sure others would too.

When babies eat or drink, it's from a bottle, but does it always have to be so boring? Don't kids deserve a little fashion and fun with their formula?

This one, designed like a cow, complete with an udder, is an Italian product made of polycarbonate with a silicone nipple. It's so cute I'd fill it with water and drink from it myself.

Okay, I wouldn't go that far. But I might be willing to babysit my niece more often.

Available at Spakability.

I've always been told that the flashier a wine bottle's label is, the worse the wine is. With that, here's a bottle with the image from Kiss's 1976 album Destroyer. Inside is a 2004 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. There are only 1000 bottles and each retails for $100 via Celebrity Cellars (Sarah Gilbert posted about their Madonna wine a few months back). When was the last time you saw the words "loud, brash," and "unapologetic"  alongside "firm tannins," "notes of cassis," and "a subtle framework of oak" in a wine ad?

Coca Cola is now selling 12-ounce plastic bottles of its products, the same size as the classic cans, but conveniently resealable. I have heard heated debates whether the soda tastes better in bottles or cans. I usually prefer Coke in cans to Coke in bottles, because I can't drink the whole bottle before the soda becomes flat. 20-ounces of soda are too much for me most of the time.  If you like the convenience (or flavor) of bottled Coke, but find that the 20-ounce size is too large for you to finish or too difficult to cram in your lunchbox, keep an eye out for these little guys at supermarkets and superstores in your area.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Officials in Taipei have ordered the makers Taiwan Beer to reexamine their quality control measures after the most recent in what seems to be a string of complaints. A Banqiao man recently found an aluminum wrapper and a rusty staple in one of his unopened bottles of Taiwan Beer. New Party Taipei City Councilor Li Ching-yuan recently told the Taipei Times that this is not the first time the popular brew has raised such complaints. Li cited several other instances in which bottle caps, cigarette butts, insects both live and dead, and, get this, a "condom-like" object have been found in bottles of Taiwan Beer. A directory at Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation, the brewery that produced roughly 280 million bottles of Taiwan Beer a year, apologized for the most recent incident and said that the factory would work on improving quality control.