Pretentious as it might sound, glassware is important in tasting wine. Seriously. And every wine has a different glass made specifically for it with slight variations on it from one glass producer to the next. They all have their own spin on everything, that's what makes their glass "better" than the competition. I'm here to tell you why glassware is important, then let you find whatever glass you like best. Even if it's a mason jar.
Seriously though, if you are just drinking wine, and not "tasting", mason jars are amazing! They can be so sturdy compared to a wine glass. But I digress...
There are 3 main types of wine glasses, Flutes - for sparkling wines, White wine, and Red wine glasses. All of the glasses have three main pieces that make them up.
The foot - the base of the glass.
The stem - The part that connects the foot to the bowl. (some glasses lack a stem)
The bowl - the part of the glass that actually holds the liquid.
Flutes - These sparkling wine glasses are tall and slender and designed to minimize the contact area between glass and wine to help keep the bubbles in. There is also no need to swirl sparkling wine because the effervescence naturally brings the aromas out of the wine.
White wine - White wine glasses have a larger bowl to allow for swirling the wine. The glass bowl should taper at toward to top to condense the aromas that are released when swirling.
Red wine - Red wine glasses have the largest bowl to allow for maximum surface area to wine contact while swirling. This releases the largest amount of volatile aroma compounds possible. This bowl should also taper at the top condensing these aromas.
With all of these glasses, the more the bowl tapers the more the wine aromas will be condensed for your olfactory pleasure.
If you are curious and you don't fully believe that bowl size and taper matters, get yourself 3 different glasses (wine glasses, jars, drinking glasses whatever) with varying tapers to them. Pour the same wine into each glass then swirl and sniff and see how the aroma differs from glass to glass.
One last word about glassware, when handling a wine glass, hold it by the foot or the stem. NEVER GRAB THE BOWL! Please! Again, some wine snobbery sounding stuff but it just looks terrible when you are trying to taste wine and the bowl is covered with fingerprints.
EXAMPLE: If you sat down at a restaurant and the server gave you a glass of water or a beer and all you can see are smudgey fingerprints all over the glass, you probably wouldn't be too psyched to drink out of it. Most people would probably ask for a clean glass. It just looks un-appealing. The same goes for wine. This is a prime example of people having high standards but not realizing it. Wine people just put those standards into words, but once they are put into words they just sound snobby.
With that, I leave you. Now go drink from your favorite glass, jar, or mug and enjoy some wine!
No comments:
Post a Comment