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The Right Glass
© Gael Arthur
February 19, 2005
Here I sit, yet again, two beautiful wine glasses in front of me, trying to understand how the same wine can taste so different. The glasses are both high quality, with large bowls, but with distinctly different shapes. I know this is not a cheap trick – I opened the bottle, I poured the wine. One wine smells and tastes great, the other is dull on the nose and tannic in the mouth. What is going on?
This exercise in frustration is born of a seminar at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival. The Riedel Crystal / Robert Mondavi Winery event, dubbed “Taste the Extreme Difference”, is one of the best structured wine tastings I have ever attended. Not only did I learn something unexpected, but I also walked away with more than purple teeth and a vague craving for a beer. I am now a convert to the mission of Georg Riedel: every wine deserves the right glass.
It is the Saturday morning of Wine Festival Week and some four dozen wine lovers straggle in (many of us having been at three or more events for each of the past three days). Two people nurse large coffees, oblivious to the havoc they are wreaking on their palates before tasting the four superb Mondavi wines selected for the seminar.
Like most sit-down tastings, the wines are poured and waiting. Although there are only four wines to taste, there is precious little room. We have a standard tasting glass (empty), a water glass and four comparatively gargantuan glasses, each a different shape, each with a different wine in it. A paper place mat identifies each glass by name and number and each wine by name and vintage. Spit bucket and bread basket complete the tableau.
Our hosts from Riedel and Mondavi are entertaining and relaxed as they chat informally about a bizarre concept: the glass as messenger for the wine, like a telephone wire versus a string connecting a couple of tin cans. It sounds a little too esoteric for me, an admitted cynic. After all, I own several sets of nice glasses and I know which wines go in which glass.
The exercise is simple – smell and taste the wine in a glass specifically designed for that varietal, then pour it in the little basic tasting glass. Repeat.
We start with the Stags Leap Sauvignon Blanc, savouring the aromas, the crisp clean acidity, all the usual wine tasting stuff. It’s a lovely wine. Then the shocker: the same wine in the little taster glass is, to put it as nicely as possible, not very good. It is lacking the intense nose that it exhibited in the big glass and it seems much more acidic. We pour the wine back into its rightful vessel and it is miraculously restored.
We continue through Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, each example more obvious than the last. The most deplorable combination is the smooth and velvety Carneros Pinot Noir in the Chardonnay glass – it becomes tannic and flat. The Chardonnay glass is identical to the Pinot Noir glass at the bottom of the bowl, but its wider opening effectively kills the delicate aromas and changes the flavour.
The glass does not change the flavour. The shape of the glass determines the direction the wine moves as it enters your mouth. The tongue detects sweet, salty, bitter and acid in different parts of the mouth and the spot where the wine first hits the mouth creates the perception of the wine’s flavour.
The boys at the front of the room take great delight in explaining the science – they love taking on a room full of sceptics and challenging their beliefs. The wines are showing well (in the right glasses), and there comes a moment when people stop spitting and start drinking. The questions begin.
Will these glasses make a bad wine taste better? The experts are quick to say that a glass cannot fix a flawed wine. Because the glasses amplify whatever is in the glass, a bad wine might taste even worse. I can’t comment on bad wines, but I can report that in subsequent sampling and comparing glasses using more than twenty “average” wines, there is no debate: Average wines taste better in the right glass.
Think of it this way: If the right glass makes a $15 wine taste like a $25 wine and a $30 wine taste like a $50 wine, the cost of new stemware pales when compared to the extra benefit in a year of wine consumption.
But wait! This tasting sampled four wine varieties in four glasses - what about the myriad of other types of wine? What is the right shape for Tempranillo or Torrontes? Grenache or Grecanico? How many sets of wine glasses are mandatory and is there a special dust-proof storage cabinet that comes with them? A visit to Puddifoot in Kerrisdale (the distributor for Riedel stemware) with its wall of glasses only amplifies the magnitude of the problem. This may be the investment of a lifetime, but should a complete set of stemware cost more than a small car?
The Riedel and Mondavi team suggest we spend as much on a single glass as we do for an average bottle of wine. Since I am not in the habit of buying $135 wines (although the recently tasted 2002 Bouchard Père et Fils Nuits-Saint-Georges would be high on my list if I were), there is no need to spring for the Sommelier collection of hand blown lead crystal. The Vinum Extreme glasses are lovely glasses and represent good value for a regular wine drinker like me. I can buy them two at a time and build up a collection. For people who only drink one or two varietals, it’s a piece of cake.
The biggest concern with big beautiful crystal glasses is the amount of time and care required to wash and polish them. Riedel has an answer with a new line of everyday glassware. “O” glasses have the same shaped bowls as the Vinum series, but they are machine made, lead-free and – here is the interesting bit – they have no stems. No stem means these glasses go in the dishwasher. At less than $15 a glass, I’m happy to experiment.
So far, the only other Riedel glasses I have bought are the whisky glasses. I am happy to report that they elevate a single malt whisky well beyond its aromas and flavours when served in a standard crystal whisky glass. Standard crystal whisky glasses are perfect for orange juice. As for the wine glasses now languishing at the back of the cupboard, well, there are always garage sales.
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