Glasses

glasses, not just the final container for wine but an important instrument for communicating it to the human senses (see tasting). Wine can be drunk from any drinking vessel but clean (and only clean) glass has the advantage of being completely inert and, if it is clear, of allowing the taster the pleasure (or in the case of blind tasting the clues) afforded by the wine’s appearance: colour, clarity, and so on.

The ideal wine glass also has a stem—indeed Americans call wine glasses ‘stemware’—so that the wine taster can hold the glass without necessarily affecting the wine’s temperature (a critical element in wine tasting). The stem also enables a glass to be rotated easily (although it takes a certain knack); rotation, as explained in tasting, is essential for maximizing aroma or bouquet. This rotation process also means that the ideal wine glass narrows towards the rim, to minimize the chance of spillage during rotation, and to encourage the volatile flavour compounds to collect in the space between the surface of the wine and the rim of the glass.

Individuals have their own aesthetic preferences, but any glass which fits the above criteria will serve as a wine glass, including some relatively inexpensive examples. There is a sensual thrill to be had, however, in really thin crystal. This is usually expensive, although central Europe, and bohemia in particular, has a long tradition of producing fine glasses at good prices.

For many households, a single wine glass shape and size will do, perhaps supplemented by smaller glasses for fortified wines and an elongated one for sparkling wines. Purists, however, use slightly different glasses for different sorts of wine, conventionally (although not particularly logically) a smaller glass for white wines, and traditionally Germanic shapes for German and Alsace wines.

In this respect there is no greater purist than Georg Riedel, an Austrian glass-maker who is unusual for his wine connoisseurship. He has designed a series of different glasses not just for young red bordeaux and mature red bordeaux, but also, for example, different glasses for vintage port and tawny port, for Brunello di Montalcino and for Chianti. These designs are all based purely on analysing how different taste characteristics are optimized on the nose and palate by minute variations in glass design. Those determined to take full advantage of all Riedel permutations may need to give up a room or two to accommodate the necessary number of glasses, however, and in practice most people content themselves with just two or three possible glass types, often chosen as much on appearance as on efficacy.