The Right Wine Glass

Posted by Alan Boehmer Jul 4, 2006

Does it really matter which glass you choose to enjoy your wine? Actually, the answer is not as simple as you might think.

The more complex and aromatic the wine is, the more important your choice becomes. It's been a common practice, for example, in homey Italian restaurants to place a jug of wine on the table and offer small tumblers to pour it into. The wine, almost always red, was inexpensive and rarely had any distinguishing characteristics.

It's my view that cheap red wine is often best served chilled and in tumblers. As wine warms up it releases the ethers and esters that comprise its aroma. But if these aromatics aren't in the wine in the first place, the warmer temperature only underscores the wine's faults.

On the other hand, aromatic wines need to mix with oxygen to release their fragrance. Very aromatic wines benefit from very large bowls, often as large as 24 oz. (A standard wine bottle holds 25 oz.!) These large wine glasses provide plenty of room to swirl the wine.

Shape matters, too. Wine glasses with straight sides should be avoided unless you intend to wear your wine. All glasses intended for table wine need to taper inward near the top so the wine stays inside the glass when you swirl. Traditional exceptions are dessert wine glasses. Port and Sherry glasses often have no inward taper, because their manufacturer assumes that these wines won't be swirled. That assumption is certainly open to debate. Once again, if the wine has any aromatic qualities, it will benefit from oxygenation and is best served in tapered stemware.

The prettiest wine glasses are made by crystal manufacturers such as Waterford, Edinburgh, Stuart, Rosenthal, Baccarat, and Josair. These companies have been making beautiful hand cut crystal for centuries and their products look terrific as part of a table setting. Unfortunately, their designs are almost always straight sided or outwardly tapered. Great wine should always be served in plain, clear, inwardly tapered stemware.

See our article Wine Touring to read about the effect one crystal manufacturer has had on contemporary choices of stemware.

You can find over two hundred articles in our California Wine archive.