What's in a Glass?
© Donald A. Dibbern, Jr.
The event we all have been waiting for has at last occurred: Riedel has introduced its twelfth different Pinot Noir wineglass shape. As this newest one is designed for my home grape, Oregon Pinot Noir, it seems as good a time as any for me to pen a column about stemware for wine. Astute readers may note my use of the term stemware, not glassware, but more on that later. Let's get the questions and answers out of the way up front. Did we need it? Do we want it? Does it even matter? No, of course not. Well, maybe, sure. Yes, most certainly.
Doesn't wine appreciation have too much pretension already, than to have to also now worry about serving the proper wine in the proper glass, you may ask. I agree that this is certainly a reasonable concern. Snobbery and pretentiousness have absolutely no place in true wine appreciation. I'll bet that Miles' 1961 Cheval Blanc tasted pretty good out of the paper cup, at the end of the movie Sideways. Aesthetics and function are certainly reasonable goals for a serving vessel, however. You could also eat Michelin three-star cuisine with your fingers, off a paper plate and using a plastic knife, but no one would claim it is wrong to enjoy it more on fine bone china, set with elegant silverware.
Starting with the basics, we want a glass that allows us to see, smell, and taste the wine to good advantage. The rich color of wine is one of its most beautiful characteristics, so the bowl should be transparently clear and simple, free of distracting patterns or shapes that might confuse the eye. The bowl should be ample enough to hold a decent quantity of wine with enough headspace and usually at least a slight taper, to concentrate the aromas and better allow for a swirl to accentuate their release.
What of the effects of the shape of the glass upon the taste of the wine? Aye, there's the rub. It is very easy to quickly convince yourself that this does, in fact, matter. Just pour some of your favorite wine into a short straight-sided tumbler, a thick-rimmed water glass, and a couple of different wine glasses, whatever you happen to have handy in the kitchen cabinet, and simply taste for yourself. It is a bit difficult to describe exactly some of the differences, perhaps because the English language has many more words in its vocabulary for how something looks, as opposed to how it smells or tastes. But it does taste, and smell, better in glasses that more closely approach those ideals embodied by Riedel, Spiegelau, and other glassmakers who cater to wine enthusiasts.
Despite examining both their catalog and website, I found it difficult to even accurately count the number of different models presently available from Riedel, but my best guess is that the new Oregon Pinot Noir glass is about number 155 or 156. Now, do we need over one hundred and fifty distinct glasses for different types of wine and spirits? No, you can stop building that additional glassware storage wing to your house right now. Even discounting the many models that are similarly shaped but marketed at different price points (glass instead of crystal, machine-made instead of hand-blown), you don't even need a six-pack of each of the forty-four models in their flagship Sommeliers Collection. Each stem of which costs more than a bottle of most fine wines. Yet, I applaud them for the diversity that they present, and suggest that the availability of glasses of this type and quality has made an enormous contribution to wine appreciation.
Although these two statements may seem incompatible at first, let me clarify. I look at a wineglass as a kind of a tool, if you will. Like a chef might consider his or her knives, they help with the preparation and presentation. Most true cooks would tell you that they don't need or use the dozen different knives that come in a "set," they find a particular chef's knife that they like for general use, and have a few other specialized knifes that serve specific purposes.
Without trying to push the analogy too far, wineglasses are similar in purpose, acting on the wine to shape it, developing and presenting its flavor and texture in a particular way. So, even though I may only use a small number of different glass shapes, and you may only use a few as well, our specific choices may be quite different depending on the wines we like and our differences of palate.
To give just one concrete example, I tend to like New World wines and drink them earlier rather than later, particularly enjoying their freshness and fruit. Most of the Riedel models I use personally, for both whites and reds, have rather more taper to their shape. This I find pleasantly enhances the relatively primary fruit of these wines. On the occasions that I drink older and Old World wines, with less fruit and more complex tertiary aromas (such as tobacco, leather, earth, and such), I prefer the glasses with more of a straight-sided bowl. Those non-fruit notes are fine in small amounts to add complexity, but they are less appealing if concentrated, like sticking your nose into an old shoe!
By contrast, when reading Matt Kramer's entertaining book Making Sense of Wine, I get the distinct impression that his palate has more appreciation for Old World-styled wines. Although I don't know Mr. Kramer personally, I find it no surprise therefore that he has recommended the use of the straight-sided Riedel Zinfandel/Chianti model as his usual all-purpose wine glass.
What do I use for wine glasses? My own favorite general use Riedel glass is the Vinum Shiraz (#416/30), which has a much bigger bowl and stronger taper than the Zin model. This is the one I reach for about ninety percent of the time. I do have a couple of other stems for special purposes, though. I use the Tempranillo (#416/31) glass for richer high-alcohol reds, like Zin and Grenache, since the smaller bowl minimizes the excess spirity component. I have a couple of Extreme Pinot Noir (#444/7) glasses for California "fruit-bomb" Pinot, while at the other end of the spectrum I use the Vinum Bordeaux (#416/0) model on the infrequent occasions that I drink Italian Brunello or other big traditionally-styled Old World reds.
For white wines, it again depends upon the style. Steely, stony, Chablis-style Chards go into my Cabernet glasses (heresy, I know!), while oaky, buttery Cali-chards go into the aforementioned Shiraz glasses. Leesy, toasty, yeasty Chardonnays, I prefer to drink from the Vinum Montrachet (#416/97) model--imagine that, using a white wine glass for a white wine. The only white wines I prefer out of smaller glasses are aromatic varieties, such as Muscat or New World Sauvignon Blanc (which provides more use for my Tempranillo glasses) and Riesling, where I finally broke down and got a couple of Rhinegau (#416/1) stems. The key is not slavish devotion to the "correct" choice but instead, like wine and food pairing, a familiarity with the wines and the effects of the matching. Your own preferences and selections will probably differ from mine.
Am I forgetting something…? Oh yeah, add a couple of champagne flutes, port glasses for dessert wines, black glasses for truly blind tasting, and now the new Oregon Pinot Noir glass, to my collection. All right, I admit that glassware does tend to multiply, whether you truly need it or not.
The real question is, do I find this new glass useful? Yes, it works quite nicely for me, personally. And I even use it for Oregon Pinot. It was introduced at our local wine festival last month, the International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville, Oregon. With its medium-large bowl, moderately strong taper, and slightly flared lip, it appears to be a hypothetical midpoint between the Vinum Extreme Pinot and Sommeliers Burgundy Grand Cru models. In one stroke, this neatly solves my complaints with both of the prior shapes, the too-extreme taper of the former and the almost ridiculously enormous bowl of the latter. Oregon Pinot can certainly benefit from accentuating a bit of fruitiness with the taper, and enhancing its elegance by the flared rim that slightly attenuates acidity.
This new wine glass is indeed made of glass, however, not lead crystal. I do seem to find a slight, and I emphasize very slight, improvement in wines tasted out of crystal. Initially I thought that this was just some sort of reverse psychology on myself, since I like the fact that glass is non-toxic, easy to clean, less expensive, and so forth, so crystal must be better somehow.
But it turns out that lead crystal has a microscopically rough surface, which is why it stains with red wine, and perhaps this coarse area of contact subtly enhances the release of aroma and flavor. It clearly improves the beading of sparkling wines, as the bubbles form at the point of these tiny surface imperfections. The newest high-tech material for wine glasses is titanium crystal. They are advertised as stronger, clearer, and less toxic than lead glassware, and they appear to be so in my experience. I am not a materials scientist, but to me, they also seem to be as smooth as glass, too. I find, again to my admitted disappointment, that I still prefer lead crystal for the finest wines. So, there is yet no perfect glass, just lots of choices that all have their place.
Another popular new option for wine glasses is to go stemless. Maybe it's just me, but I find this whole trend pretentiously anti-pretentious, or is it ostentatiously anti-ostentation? Hey, let's drink really expensive wine out of a tumbler (albeit a ten-dollar one)! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for drinking what you want and how you want to drink it. But I don't think most of these glasses are being used for picnic reds, at home with pizza or burgers. They would be fine for that, although simpler cheaper glasses would be, too.
But in fancy restaurants, with $20 corkage fees? Do I really have to drink my wine out of a sippy cup? Must I have to stare at greasy fingerprints on my wine glass? Should I have to hope that, like some sort of a fancy Weebles toy for gourmands, my round-bottomed wine glass might wobble but won't fall down? Sorry, rant over, at least until next month ...
© copyright 2007 by Donald A. Dibbern, Jr., all rights reserved
August 2007
To contact Donald A. Dibbern Jr., write him at re.wine@verizon.net
