Food And Beverage

Choosing Wine Glasses for Fine Wine

Choosing a wine is hard enough, but there are at least lots of guides and advisory websites or books out there to help.  Choosing the right wine glasses to go with your wine sometimes seems much harder as the variety of tableware on the market is huge these days.The correct wine glass brings out all the best stuff in the right wine. A good wine should be appreciated for its looks, its smell, and its flavour which means the eyes and nose as well as the mouth.

f you drink in a bistro or bar, the only choice you’ve usually got is “large or small”?Professor Claus J. Riedel (as in the famous glassmaker) who was the first glass designer to realise that wines are affected by the shape and size of the wine glasses from which they are drunk.That shape will magnify the intensity of aroma for different wines or direct wine to specific parts of the tongue.Some shapes and sizes will enhance fruitiness and others tannin. Some shapes will even help to keep Champagne from going flat. So before you reach for the bottle opener, its worth considering which glass you’re going to use first.

Whatever wine glasses you choose, avoid the contemporary cone-shaped variety.It’s impossible to swirl the wine and the wide rim is just wrong for appreciating the bouquet. There are those who claim fine lead crystal wine glasses are the only way to appreciate the aroma, colour and taste of a fine wine.Lead crystal wines glasses are beautiful, but can be expensive (unless you get them cheaper via an Internet retailer for example) but they are well worth the extra.

So, do you really need dozens of different wine glasses to be socially acceptable?No, not unless you want to!But there are four basic shapes that are good to have in any serious wine drinker’s cupboard:

1.Good all-round white wine glasses should have a wide bowl and narrow rim.

2.Decent all-purpose red wine glasses should be shorter and wider than the white wine glass to allow better swirling and more surface area for air contact – especially for bringing out the flavours and aromas in well-aged red wines.

3.Off-dry to sweet wines (like Piesporter) should be served in wine glasses with a slightly flared rim. This shape helps to guide the wine to the “sweetness” area of the palate much more quickly.

4.The classic champagne flute is the best style for sparkling wines as the long, narrow body concentrates the bubbles, intensifying the aroma and taste.

More information on wine glasses and wine racks.