How to choose a wine glass
18 January 2010
There was an article on the Wall Street Journal about
choosing everyday wine glasses.
The whole article is informative but one detail in particular caught my
attention. Among their recommendations there is the ‘Vivant Bordeaux’ glass by
Riedel. Riedel, of course, is the most prestigious brand of wine glasses. The
glass is surely good, but it troubled me that the authors write that Riedel
apparently sells (or at least used to sell) what is exactly the same glass
under a different brand, Nachtmann, at a different price. When branded Riedel
one glass costs 15$ (in a two glass set), but when branded Nachtmann it costs 9$
(in a six glass set). Thus, to have the Riedel name on this glass you pay 6$
(66%) extra. The difference is too great to be explained away by a quantity
discount.
Obviously this is just one instance, but I think it represents well the
situation in the world of wine. I do not doubt that Riedel makes good wine glasses,
but so do many other companies, and people pay for the famous name more than
they do for the actual object they are buying. I think a major reason for this
is that people don’t know enough to make good choices. Fortunately there are a
few valid rules on how to choose wine glasses.
Winedoctor’s list
is very similar to mine, but the recommendations are slightly different.
- Shape. The smell of the wine is an important part in how you perceive
the wine. To be able to smell the wine you need a glass that curves inward at
the top. For sparkling wine the bowl should be tall and narrow, but this can be
sacrificed if you are unable to get a glass just for sparkling wine.
- Glass. A good wine glass is made of clear, undecorated glass. Although
colored and decorated glasses exist, they do not let you see the color of the
wine. I feel that unless you want to make notes of the wines you taste, the
color is less important than the smell. However, the color too affects your
perception of the wine. I also think that the kind of glass used is relatively
unimportant, as long as the rim of the glass is thin enough. Rules of thumb for
what “thin enough” means are difficult to spell out, but it helps to make
comparisons between different kinds of glasses in the store. If it looks
indestructible, it is not thin enough.
- Size. The glass should be big enough. It is more difficult to find
glasses that are too big than ones that are too small. If you want to have just
one kind of glass for all the wines you drink, get a relatively big white wine
glass — something similar to the
ISO tasting glass, but slightly
bigger. If you regularly drink many different wines and if you are able to get
many kinds of glasses, it might be worthwhile to get glasses for red, white,
sparkling and dessert wines.
- Stem. A wine glass should have a stem, for several reasons. Many think
that without a stem the body heat warms the wine too much. It is also said that
fingerprints stain the glass and do not let you see the color of the wine. The
first claim is apparently controversial and the second one might seem
unimportant. But the fact is that bigger wine glasses, and in particular those
with a wide “Burgundy” bowl, are too big to be held comfortably without a stem.
Obviously the more you know about wine the more you want from your glasses, but
it is surprising how far you can go just by following these simple rules. If
only choosing wine was so simple…