Interesting article in today’s NYTimes by Eric on selecting wine glasses: NYTimes:WineGlasses
Eric pontificates:
OhOh…he’s going to be in deep $hit w/ ole GeorgRiedel now.
He also comes out against stemless glasses:
I find stemless glasses perfectly fine to use. I hold them by my fingertips, not in a full-hand grasp like a ham-handed Sabre fencer. I seriously doubt that there is any significant warming of the wine in the glass by my fingertips. As for the smudges on the stemless glass…as we say in Kansas…BFD!!
I’ve never seen the Libbey KentfieldEstate glasses he recommends for a budget glass.
Anyway…nothing profound for us wine geeks but an interesting read.
Tom
I hate doing this because for once he makes sense.
But this is the part that always gets me:
They can be held by the stem so that the temperature of the wine won’t be altered by the warmth of the hands
Right. Because everybody’s hot little hands are so painfully warm all the time that people go around causing fires just by touching things.
Ever see someone hold a tumbler or glass of wine or any other drink? Once human beings are past three years old, they generally hold it with their fingers, not tightly in their paws.
And those fingertips have to be like blowtorches to warm a glass of cool wine. Maybe that’s where the fingerprints come from? They just get burned into the glass? Hell, if heat were so abundant and transferred so readily, beer cans would be steaming before people were able to finish their beer!
Of all the things to go after him, I’d not pick those bloody ovals. I don’t like them and they do warm the wine IMO. Red wine is best at room temp (that is, British rooms of old), and not everyone drinks a glass of wine in a short period of time. He does miss the au courant use of stemware for Champagne, but I guess for most of his readers it would be irrelevant.
Yes and at the dining table we’ll always hold onto our glasses for the whole time (perhaps we think a dining companion might steal our wine if we put the glass down). Plus if we put a fingerprint on the glass we’ll have to throw that wine away and get a fresh glass. This is the pretentious bullshit that plagues our hobby. If I were a regular offliner where attendees would need to take their own glasses, I would buy a set of stemless versions as they are much more compact to pack, and less likely to be knocked over (with the offline tendency to have multiple glasses on the go).
Glass shape does make a difference. Where I agree is that Riedel have been OTT in their marketing of very specific glasses for very specific grapes or regional wines. Wonderful for them if we all buy a dozen different shaped glasses, x 6 of course for when we are entertaining, oh actually better make it x 8 for the inevitable breakages. Kerching!
He lost me at his third sentence, “The process can be fraught with anxiety, as many different glass styles are available, and points of view clash on what is proper and necessary.”
Really? What a dilemma to have to face. Get out the Xanax.
We use the stemless Reidels at the beach, and my wife uses one most evenings at home. They’re fine. A little harder to swirl, of course, but certainly adequate for the purpose.
We have some Zalto champagne stems that we like (thank you Chris F!) and some of the universals (which I use routinely and SWMBO uses rarely) and the rest of the stems we have almost never come out of the cabinet.
I agree that a Bordeaux style glass is suitable for everything. Since I put my glasses in the dishwasher (I know this is another faux pas) I buy this style of glass at Costco. All of the expensive glasses that I have purchased over the years have been just too damn fragile.
I like the stemless Riedel O’s for cocktails, actually, though nothing served over ice as the cubes can crack the glass. And they are very easy to transport. They fit perfect inside a generic quart sized plastic container, wrapped in a paper towel. Then you can throw two of those in a bag and have good glasses, safe for travel.
After testing it many times, I’ve come to the conclusion that, while the shape of the glass impacts my experience of the wine, there is no way of predicting which glass will make my personal experience the best. So I don’t worry about it. I usually use “burgundy” stems for burgundy out of habit, but almost everything else except champagne goes in a more bordeaux style glass. I like champagne in the Lehmann Prestige glasses. I admit that that could be largely because I think the glass is so pretty.
Personally I think the whole wine glass topic is overrated.
Good wine in a Solo cup will be still be good; crappy wine in a Solo cup will still be crappy.
Good Bordeaux wine will taste good in a Burgundy glass; lousy Bordeaux wine will be lousy in a Burgundy glass.
As an aside; I like wine to be served on the cooler side and warm up in the glass to see how it develops . And that’s a glass with our without stems.
On our current machine, there are slots they fit in (at a 45 degree angle). Unfortunately that machine broke last week and we have ordered another. Whether they will fit in the next one remains to be seen.
I got an assortment of Zaltos (Bdx, Burg, Uni, White, Champagne, Dessert) as a gift when they were first introduced in 2007 , and have bought more white, Uni, and Champ since. In 10 years I have never broken one in dishwasher. Have broken one hand washing and one that was knocked over on counter. The Burg and Bdx don’t fit on top rack, so I sometimes handwash, but if running a dedicated load I put on bottom (have a special tinker-toy style rack, but don’t remember last time I used).
Only issue I’ve had is occasionally (once every dozen washes?) the white and universal get a residue line at the bend, Oxiclean takes care of it.
We use our Riedel wine series bordeaux stems for drinking pretty much everything, bubbles included, but we have a pair of Riedel PN glasses we break out if we’re drinking PN or particularly aromatic Rhone varietal wine by ourselves. We take the stemless to the park frequently, they’re not my favorite but like many have said, if you don’t cup the bowl with both hands like you’re Olivia Pope they don’t warm the wine too much if you’re careful. For parties where nobody is going to care we have 18 inexpensive stems from Ikea that don’t hurt the budget when they break (I think they’re like $0.80 apiece or something) but do the trick.
We don’t use the dishwasher on our Riedels, as our current one loves to break stemware, but we recently bought this guy that works like a charm to hand-wash without breakage.
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