Wine School: The Right Wine Glass

Drinking and enjoying wine is about much more than the appearance and contents of the bottle. Just as the right tool can help you complete a task correctly, the right wine glass can make a huge difference to your wine experience.

When it comes to wine glasses and how to enjoy wine, it is not snobbery to insist on enjoying your wine in a glass designed for the purpose. Just as a craftsman takes pride in using the right tools, the wine lover's glass is an important instrument in the overall experience.

If you're already getting off track and thinking that we're a bit too clever when we claim that wine should be drunk from special glasses, try this little exercise; When you've opened your bottle of wine, try the following: pour into a coffee cup, a drinking bottle and a wine glass - See our own experiment further down in the article.

Taste the delights, or better yet, have an unsuspecting person judge the contents. As you might have guessed, the first two options won't do much for the wine experience. The heavy porcelain of the coffee cup prevents you from assessing the color of the wine, the straight sides make it almost impossible to sniff the aromas, and the thick rim of the cup causes the wine to hit the back of your mouth instead of the tip of your tongue.

The drinking bottle isn't much better - as a red wine container it's almost useless and apart from making the next spinning class a lot more interesting, there are no benefits to drinking wine from it.

The wine glass, on the other hand, is designed to give you the greatest wine experience, why? Or rather; how?

Most wine glasses today are made of crystal. The crystal in the glass reflects the light and gives you a clear picture of the color of the wine. A good wine glass also has a stem, which means you can hold the glass without getting greasy fingers on the glass itself or warming the wine with your hands.

This is of course purely aesthetic, and one could argue that it does not add anything crucial to the character of the wine. The shape of the glass, on the other hand, is fundamental to the experience of the wine and its character. As you may recall from our guide to wine tasting, the aroma, or bouquet, of a wine is incredibly important to the way we experience wine.

Modern wine glasses are shaped like a drop, with the widest part at the bottom of the glass. The largest Burgundy glasses are large enough to hold an entire bottle of wine, yet you usually only pour to the widest part of the glass - not to be stingy with the good drops, but to give the wine the largest surface area to release the important aroma.

The wine glass is narrow at the top, to retain the aroma for as long as possible. It also allows you to swirl the wine around in the glass without risking having to repaint the dining room afterwards. This way, the wine can spread over a larger area on the sides of the glass, releasing even more aromas.

Which wine glass is the right one? There are an incredible number of different wine glasses, and if you choose to go all the way, there are wine glasses for almost every grape type. Is it worth investing in the highly specialized glasses? It will always be a discussion about pros and cons, a bit like when hi-fi geeks discuss whether you can hear the difference between one cable or another.

Ultimately, it's all about having the glass that gives you the best all-round experience. If you're starting small, we recommend starting with a standard red wine glass, such as the Spiegelau Authentis (see image above). It has a size and shape that makes it great for red wine, but can also be used for white wine and champagne in a pinch.

If you want to expand from there, a nice addition is champagne glasses, we prefer the diamond-shaped ones, but the classic flute model can also be used. You can easily drink the white wine from the red wine glass, as long as it is not too big - a fresh, young Riesling will not do well in a large Burgundy glass.

Of course, you should also consider your own needs and choose glasses based on that; do you drink a lot of Pinot Noir? Then it would be a good idea to invest in a good Burgundy glass that gives the delicate aromas optimal conditions. Are you more of a Bordeaux style where barrel aging is more prominent? Here a more traditional red wine glass would be good, for example the classic Bordeaux glass from Spiegelau.

Does the wine glass have any impact on your wine experience? Watch our test in the video here:

Cleaning

After a nice wine evening, the glasses should of course be cleaned. Crystal glasses are delicate and can easily absorb other smells that will disrupt your next wine experience. That is why we prefer to wash the glasses by hand, with a little unscented dishwashing liquid, use a sponge to wash the glass, rinse the glass in clean water before wiping it with a clean tea towel. Remember that the crystal is very thin and can easily break if you are too eager.
Some dishwashers have a steam program for cleaning glass, so it may be a good idea to remove any lipstick from the glass before starting the dishwasher.

We hope this guide can help you when choosing your next wine glass. As mentioned, we ourselves are very happy with Spiegelau's Authentis series, which is designed in collaboration with leading sommeliers. Riedel should also be mentioned in this context; the glasses are expensive and delicate, but there is a variant for almost every grape variety.

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And finally; Rihanna shows how you absolutely-never-ever-under-any-circumstances-are-you-completely-crazy to drink a good Champagne like Armand de Brignac - Cheers!