The first glass bottles for wine date back to around the 1630s. They were generally globular in shape, with long tapered necks. Although corks were in common use by the late sixteenth century, it was not until the late seventeenth that they were widely accepted for wine, glass bungs still being popular until then. A 1681 catalogue of Gresham College, London, refers to a ‘cork scrue’ or ‘steel worm’. It was an English clergyman, the Rev Samuel Hanshall, who took out the first patent for a corkscrew.
