Glassware

Glassware is an interesting subject for me because I jump on and off of the bandwagon so often.  Like other wine gimmicks (aerators, fancy decanters, wine preservation gizmos, etc.), I think the difference is purely mental.  Much the way that someone would be scared to call a $5 bottle of wine better than a $50 bottle, I think that drinking out of fancy glassware opposed to a paper cup just compels people to think that nicer=better.  My thoughts on glassware are simple- it is still what’s in the cup that counts much more so than what the cup is.

I think that some of the premium glassware companies that have developed cups specifically for certain varietals may be onto something, but I’m not entirely sold on the idea.  I think that wine, being a drink that inspires some thought, definitely benefits from a nice presentation, but are the glasses worth the often high price tag?  These glasses, designed for a specific varietal, say Pinot Noir, are shaped in such a way to accentuate the aroma and bouquet of a wine, and to allow for optimal air flow.  I’m sure that there are differences in each grape varietal that justify the different shapes in glasses, but I am still unsure that Mr. Reidel’s ideas of optimal shape, air exposure, etc. align with mine.

To test the merits of glassware, I am going to sample a Pinot Noir out of two different glasses.  Glass one will be the Reidel glass designed for Pinot Noir, the other glass will be just your standard red wine glass.  Because the two glasses are shaped differently, I won’t be able to conduct this test blind, but I’m going to trust my own impartiality on the matter (you should too). 

The wine that I will be trying is a Frei Brothers Pinot Noir Reserve from 2008.  I pour myself half a glass into each of the glasses and begin my tasting.  I start by looking at the wine in each glass and it looks the same.  I then swirl the wine around the glass and go in for a sense of the smell for each of the wines.  The standard glass has a bright, fruity smell, mostly berries, but that was all that I got out of it except for the standard alcohol smell.  Now, onto the Reidel glass.  I immediately smelt the difference between the two glasses.  It smelled like an entirely different wine, but this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  While I got the berry smell the same as the other glass, I was overpowered by alcohol from my smell here.  I had to recover a bit from the sting in my nose and then decided to look at the bottle to see if it was a high alcohol content wine or if the glass was just accentuating the smell for some reason.  Turns out this Pinot was a 14.5% wine, meaning it has a pretty high alcohol content.  I was now kind of impressed with the glass being able to tell me about this aspect of the wine’s character, but I wasn’t blown away by the overall difference between the two.

Onto taste.  Simply put, the same wine tasted the same out of the two glasses.  Honestly, had the glasses been the same shape and I had been blindfolded, I would not have been able to taste a difference.  I’m sure Mr. Reidel would say my palate isn’t sophisticated enough and I was doing it wrong, but no matter his opinion, I know what I tasted.  I let the wine open up a bit and after a half hour I sampled each again and still found no difference.  I wasn’t surprised; I was a bit disappointed to be honest.  After my modest discovery in the scent department, I had high hopes for the taste difference but was left with nothing (except the wine which was quite good regardless of the glass). 

So, my moral of the story from this single test: the glass can have an effect on the way we smell wine and what stands out to us, but as far as taste goes, the difference is nothing (or if there is a difference, it is so small that it isn’t easily detectable).  If you have the means to buy nice glass ware, consider it a luxury and something that is nice to have, but don’t think that you are missing out on anything special if you are just drinking out of the standard wine glasses.  Maybe I’ll try to track down a glass designed for a different varietal to see if my findings are consistent across varietals.