BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Wine Is Glassware Important?

How important is your glassware to you. Do you insist on only using white wine glasses with whites and red wine glasses with reds?

I find a HUGE difference in the taste of a wine depending on what type of glass it's in. I've done tastings with the exact same wine in different shaped glassware and it's amazing how different it can taste. The wine can taste really incredible, and really awful, just by varying the glass shape.

If you're trying to get the best value for your dollar, the glassware makes a huge difference. You can get an $8 bottle of wine and have it taste absolutely incredible, or have it taste atrocious, just by adjusting the glass.

I do believe in careful decanting of my wine and shape of the glassware based on the wine's type. However, I do not, personally, believe the actual makeup of the glass would make a great difference (e.g., common glass, crystal or ????).

Kitty

I agree with Lisa that the shape is important, and with Kitty that the material is less important.

One thing I always insist on is absolutely clean glasses. When I go out to eat I always smell my glass. If it smells like dishwashing detergent I send it back to be rinsed out. This is one of the biggest killers of wine.

Brava!!!! Here's where my hubby flinches, BUT if we are going out to a special dinner and/or a special restaurant - I may carry my own wine glasses depending on the history/reputation of the place.

Dirty glasses or super dish detergent glasses are absolute taste killers and appetite killers for me!

Kitty

I only have white wine glasses and flutes right now. When I have Champagne I insist on using flutes. It isn't worth drinking Champagne without them.

What's cool with Champagne is that the bubbles come from imperfections in the glass. So if you carve an initial in the bottom of the flute, the bubbles will come up in that shape. It works great with easy letters like "L" <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Way too much can be said about glasswork. Am not sure about material, but am sure that the thinner the glass, the better, but also more expensive. Shapes vary from wine to wine. If you're into being completely professional with wines, you'll need quite a few sets. You'll usually need a set for white wine. And maybe three for the red. The set you choose depends on the age of the wine.

How do you decant?

I have a Riedel decanter -

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Excellent choice indeed. Riedel glasswork for wine is the best you can really get. The most professional obviously. (I'm not talking about expensive glasswork by designers such as Versace, they are more state of the art).

Old wines should be decanted, trully. Not always though, sometimes it's enough to leave them be for a few minutes in the glass and then take it. Sometimes, you need to open a bottle half an hour before consuming and live it that way. And often you do need to decant. Temperatures vary, older wines tend to be better at higher temperatures, 18 degrees Celcius. Younger are better at 14-16 degrees. Whites are best at 6-8 degrees. Sometimes you decant for 30 minutes, sometimes for an hour or two and sometimes for two days! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> As for the temperature problem while decanting ... you can fight it with either chilling the decanter prior to decanting, so it will hold the temperature for a while, or you can put this special medical thingie (don't know how it is cold), it contains some sort of gelly substance, you put it in freezer and then apply on a body part, when need. So, you put it under the decanter. I've done it many times, and it works just fine. Temperature is crucial, I always measure it, since wine often is worthless at low temperatures (or too high). Any decanting experience you can share?

Temperature is one of the major factors most over looked by wine drinkers. "Room temperture" doesn't mean 75F. When reviewing a red wine I ususally include the proper serving temperature.

I have a marble wine holder. If opening the bottle and leaving the wine to breathe I will usually put it in the chilled holder.

Not only older reds need to breathe. I have a great Prado Rey that REALLY needs to breathe before drinking. I just had an Aaku Shiraz that improved greatly after being allowed to breathe. Each wine has its own character that needs to be repected.

Here's a good question then - one we had a lot of trouble with during my experiment. You usually know *what* temperature to aim for with a wine. But how do you get there? Say you have a red and are trying to hit 63F with it. You're storing your wine at 55F, so you don't want to chill it any more! How do you ensure it gets to 63F, and how do you keep it at that temperature, and how do you even know it IS at that temperature?

I store my wine at 14 degrees Celcius amd have at 14-18 depending on the wine. If it needs no decanting - there is no problem. If it needs decanting and its temperature raises then I put something cold under my decanter (like that medical thing I mentioned), so, it remains fresh. That is if you need to lower the temperature. If you need to raise it, then just pour the wine into the glass and wait till it reaches an OK temperature, usually just a few minutes. I see no problem. And I use special wine thermometre to measure its temperature, very convenient. So, it just the matter of monitoring. You see it to cold? - remove decanter from the artificial cooling device. You see it too warm? - Put it on it again.

OK I found a celcius conversion chart, I think in F <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

OK wine is stored normally at 55F which is 13C so you're close to that. You say you then serve wines at 14-18C which is a good range for reds - Chianti/Zin is good at 15C/59F and Bordeaux/Shiraz is good at 18C/64F. Whites should be colder, down around 8C/47F. But I'll assume you're only drinking reds.

So you take this bottle out and let's say you decant it. Do you actually leave a thermometer sitting in the decanter for the meal now, so you know whether or not to sit the decanter on the freeze pack?

I have one of those by the way and use it a ton for cooling whites down from storage temperature. You mean like this right?

I do like white wines. But they are not easy to come by, I mean good ones. I like the ones that have been stores in barrels for some time, they have that olive oil look and taste good to me. But they a lot harder to make than normal young white wines.

No real need to have the thermometre always in the decanter. Let say you need to decant a red one for an hour. You take out of the fridge at say 13 or 14 degrees. Pour it in and put on the table. And room temperature is around 22-25. It gets warm of course. But maybe 10 minutes before you'll consume it (that is maybe 50 minutes from beginning of the decanting), you put that thing under the decanter to cool it down. And lets say it gets down to 15, and you want it at 17. So, you pour your wine into the glass and put the thermometre in it. It wall warm up rather fast, in a couple of minutes it will be at 17. So, the process doesn't require constant monitoring and ofcourse you do not need to have that cooling thing all the time under the decanter, just in the end, prior to consuming, to level the temperature.

I'd like you all to share an opinion on following dillema:

I like the the Rosenthal porcelain by Versace design and have quite a few sets. There is also Versace glasswork which looks great. I have th glasses for the whites, but not for the reds. Now, Riedel is the professional thing and the best anyony could ever need, but for some special occasions, some more impactable pieces work great. There are these red wine glasses. The dillema is that they are 28cm tall and I can guess that they are unstable. Each one costs around $180. I wouldn't like any funny looks if some invited guest accidentially flips it over and it falls on the table. From this height damage is almost guaranteed. What do you think? They look gorgeous and I'd like to have them, but I'd also like to use them and only look at them standing behind cristal. Is a glass this tall a "dangerous" item on the table?

I guess that's assuming that when you get the decanter to the right temperature that you pour out the entire decanter and then immediately drink it all. But usually it's just 2 of us eating dinner. So that decanter and wine is sitting on the table for a good 45 minutes - hour or so. Wine can warm up a huge amount in that time. Same thing at a restaurant, sometimes meals can take 1 1/2 hrs easily.

Actually, I'm a huge fan of Riedel because it ends up allowing the wine to taste perfect. I wouldn't use another glassware that "looked pretty" and ruin my wine <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> If it was a truly special occasion I'd buy a truly fabulous wine and then would do everthing remotely in my power to make that wine taste perfect. So those would be the situations that I would *most certainly* be pouring into Riedel and nothing else. I can't think of any occasion that I would not use Riedel but would use something else of the same or higher category.

If I was having a casual picnic I would probably go down to my regular wineglasses so that I didn't care if they got broken. But for anything that I cared about, I'd be in the Riedel definitely.

I think this comes back to our "I want it to look good" vs "I want it to taste good" discussion <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I am showcasing the wine's flavor. I want the wine to taste its best, so other prettyness concerns are secondary to me. I guess for me doing otherwise would be like buying a really expensive perfume in a lovely bottle that smelled awful. It would miss the entire point for me <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I guess you're exagerating a bit. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Glasses certainly are not as professionally elaborated as Riedel, but they are of a correct shape, so, only minor variations in taste may appear. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> That's my guess.





They are something like this, but even better, with a golden Versace ornament in two places. I just like them. My only concern is the size.

Still, there is no problem, you would have to have your decanter nearby and keep an eye on it. For how long can you be drinking one glass of wine? 10-20 minutes or so? You see your glass getting dry, put the cooling thing under the decanter. When glass is completely dry in about 5 minutes, you pour in some more and measure the temperature. Too cold? - wait minute, still to warm? - ignore and keep on drinking. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> You just need to do it mechanically without distracting yourself too much from the dinner, or it will spoil it. Plus/ minus one or even two degrees won't kill the taste.

You're right, the height of the stemware does look great, but is uncomfortable for most people to use. We have a set similar to this, a gift, that sits in my crystal cabinet. I'd stick to Reidel.

I guess that's the question, so you would keep a thermometer on the table and test it occasionally?

I guess what I'm getting at is that there must be a better way to have the wine be at the right temperature. Most people don't even try, meaning their wine tastes anywhere from OK to pretty awful. In my taste test it was amazing how truly undrinkable a wine became at the various 'off' temperatures. You might think it was "well ... ok ..." if you hadn't tasted the original. But when you tasted it side by side with the original, suddenly you realized how truly awful the others were.

If it was easier to know, I think more people would try!

We used one of those metal clip-on-the-bottle temperature things in the experiment and it was awful. So that doesn't work.

I have two theories. One is the stick-on thermometer, sort of like they have for kids foreheads. You just stick it on the bottle or decanter and it tells you all the time exactly what the current temperature was. They could make a light colored version that was small and just covered the 10 degree range in question for a wine. So it'd be small, discreet, easy to use. I should find someone to make them and make a trillion dollars <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

My second theory is actually out already. There's this effect called the Pelltier effect I believe, in essence it's used to heat or cool electronics. You send an electric current through it and it can heat or cool something based on the current. So when you build a tube out of this, you can either make heat go in (warming the bottle) or heat go out (cooling the bottle). And it's attached to a thermostat so it does it automatically. All you do is dial the tube to be say at 64F and POOF this device keeps it at 64F, gently. No vibrations or anything.

I want to get one of these Pelltier things and try it! I was curious what people did normally though <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Look! This is the kind I use for winemaking already, but they say they CAN MAKE THEM FOR WINE DRINKERS!! I'm going to write them to see if I can get some made up. Wouldn't it be cool??

http://www.liquidcrystalresources.com/beverage.cfm

This looks great. A good idea.

In response to this discussion I posted an article on Proper Glassware at the Wine page. Enjoy.

I'd seen that on the front page when you first posted it, great article!!

Thank you.