Your Fine Wine Deserves The Best
Luxury wine glasses are for collectors who care deeply about wine, who invest in their collections, and who drink with mindful consideration and, dare we say, reverence. If wine occupies an important role in your life, the choice of glasses is crucial and may demand this sort of considerable commitment in the pursuit of elevated wine experiences.
Does this sound like you? Keep reading.
Why The Glass Matters
Wine can be drunk from any vessel from a red Solo cup to an ultra-thin, hand-blown wine glass. But think of it this way, choosing wine glasses is a bit like choosing a car: Even the least-expensive car will get you from point A to point B, but the trip will be a completely different experience in a fine luxury vehicle. It’s all about elevating the experience to maximize the perception of the wine—creating a moment of luxury that you’ll always remember.
“Wine nuts also like to commune with their wine as physically closely as possible, which means that thin crystal is highly valued whereas thicker, patterned and cut glass are not.” —Jancis Robinson
Wine Glass Shape Makes a Difference!
Alcohol & Aroma
Ethanol vapors carry the wine’s aroma compounds from your glass to your nose, and these aroma compounds are responsible for our perception of the flavor of the wine. This is why we swirl—to release aroma compounds as they are lifted from the glass by way of the alcohol vapors (the introduction of oxygen also interacts with the structural elements of the wine, allowing it to ‘open up’).
The shape of the glass and the diameter of its rim affect how the aroma compounds are released and ultimately perceived in our drinking experience. The more delicate the wine’s aromas, the smaller the bowl and rim diameter need to be for the purpose of retaining the delicate aromas. Whereas wines with very bold aroma compounds require interaction with more oxygen for them to adequately open up, making a larger bowl and rim diameter necessary for the most optimal experience.
🍷Why style specific, and not necessarily grape variety specific?
The same grape variety can be produced in many different styles—it’s the style of the final wine that really matters.
What do we mean by style? Take Chardonnay for example. A Petit Chablis is usually made in a light, crisp, easy, early-drinking style with no time in oak. The resulting wine would be very light and linear and would be appropriately served in a glass that is small and narrow.
However, a Grand Cru White Burgundy wine made in a reductive style could be very full-bodied with oak treatment. This wine would need a larger glass to allow the wine to fully unfurl.
One grape variety, but two very different wines with different glassware needs.
Basic Wine Glass Styles
The glasses below are very general styles, but there are far more glasses out there to choose from. The widest part of the bowl may be more angular than round, and the angle from that point to the rim of the glass may be more dramatic depending on the size of the rim of the glass. Slight alterations in the size, shape, angle, and rim diameter all play a role and do make a difference in your final perception of the wine, however small they may be. That is why there are so many glasses to choose from. Learning the basics below will help guide your choices by understanding how to identify the features most important to you in a glass.
White Wine
White wines are served in smaller glasses with smaller bowls and rim diameters. The smaller vessel preserves more delicate aromas and helps to maintain cooler temperatures, allowing the acidity to be more expressive and balanced in the drinking experience. Wine glasses like this are well-suited to wines like Sauvignon Blanc, Chablis, Pinot Grigio, Riesling, and some rosés.
Light Red Wine
Light to medium-bodied red wines need a bit more room than white wines for their aroma compounds to open up, and they do not need to maintain as low of a temperature. The Bowl size is larger, and the rim diameter is also larger. The glass aptly captures aromas from these lighter red wines and delivers them to the nose for an elevated drinking experience. Use a light white wine glass for Pinot Noir, Gamay, Trousseau, Schiava, and even Nebbiolo.
This style of glass would also be appropriate for a highly reductive White Burgundy. Such wines have very complex aroma profiles that often need more time to breathe in the glass.
Bold Red Wine
Full-bodied red wines with high tannins express themselves optimally in glasses with a wide bowl and ample room for swirling and oxygenation. Powerful aroma compounds need to open up and intense tannins need to soften. The larger exposed surface area of these stems delivers more aroma compounds than ethanol burn as the rim is also further from the nose. These glasses are ideal for wines such as Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Tempranillo, and Sangiovese.
Sparkling Wine
Sparkling wines have traditionally been served in wide-rimmed coupes and tall, thin flutes. While both are beautiful, they do not serve the wine best. A flute keeps the wine in a compact space to retain its cool temperature and preserve bubbles, but the wine is not able to properly breathe, unfurling the complexity of its aromas and flavors. A coupe certainly allows for adequate oxygenation, but the aromas and bubbles quickly dissipate with the shallow depth and wide rim, not to mention the fact that swirling is nearly impossible.
The best choice? A tulip-shaped glass taller than the coupe with a wide point in the bowl (yet still smaller than other glasses to retain temperature and effervescence) that allows the aroma compounds to open up with fuller expression, tapering to a more narrow rim to capture those aromas before escaping. Standard white wine glasses also work beautifully.
High-Quality, Luxury Wine Glasses & How to Spot Them
Quality: Durability vs Craftsmanship
When we say quality, what do we mean—durability or craftsmanship and experience? Some glasses are made for durability to handle the rigors of repeated use and washing in a restaurant. Others are functional works of art meant to act as a nearly weightless liaison between you and your wine. We are certainly talking about fine, hand-crafted, wafer-thin stemware when considering the quality of a wine glass.
When selecting your glasses, there are a few details to consider their quality:
- Stems: Pulled-stem or drawn glasses are handmade rather than pieced glasses where the bowl, stem, and foot are all separate components that are later ‘pieced’ together. High-quality handmade glasses are all one piece made by the pulling method. Another word on stems—the thinner they are, the more fragile they are too.
- Mouth-Blown Bowl vs Machine-Made: Mouth-blown glasses are always finer and thinner than mechanically-made glasses. The thinner the glass, the lighter and clearer the bowl of the glass will be, lending to an improved sense of the wine’s color and clarity.
- Lip/Rim: The lip of the glass should be flat—sheared as if cut with scissors—for a crisp, clean sip. The too-common bulbous, beaded rim is sometimes labeled a “safety edge,” but that’s marketing speak used to disguise cheap manufacturing. It’s a hallmark of cafeteria-grade glassware. The lip should be fine, thin, and clean so there is as little barrier between you and your sip of wine.
- The Sound: Listen. There should be a pleasant bell-like tone when the largest point of the bowl is tapped. If there is a metallic clink, the material and craftsmanship are of lesser quality.
🍷Material: Why crystal, not glass?
Crystal has added minerals that make it stronger than glass, making it possible to create light, thin, elegant stemware that is more durable than it would be if it were only made from glass.
Wine Glass Selection Rules of Thumb
Once you’ve settled on the wine glass quality and style(s) you need, keep these suggestions in mind:
- Always buy more than you think you’ll need. Glasses do break, and you’ll want to account for that possibility. Also, maybe one or two more guests attend your dinner party, or maybe you’ll decide to do a side-by-side tasting. Having too many glasses rather than too few is the side to err on.
- Budget: Only buy glasses you can afford to break. If you never intend to replace a $125 glass after it happens to break while you’re polishing it (that’s always when it happens), consider a slightly lower price point.
- Versatility for Volume: Are you buying glasses for entertaining a large crowd, or for enjoying an intimate evening at home? Consider purchasing a large volume of versatile glasses that can be used for multiple wine styles, then fewer quantities of glasses suited to very specific wine styles.
- Stem Length: Be sure the stem is long enough for you to swirl the wine and hold the glass a comfortable distance away from your hand so you don’t warm the wine with your body heat (read more in our blog post, How to Hold a Wine Glass).
- Foot: The foot of the glass should be wide enough to ensure its stability. If the foot is too narrow the glass would topple with the slightest movement. The foot should be thin and elegant rather than heavy and bulky, matching the craftsmanship of the rest of the glass
“Never buy small wine glasses. Drinking wine out of a small glass feels as awkward as sitting on a chair that’s too small or eating dinner off a bread plate.” —Karen MacNeil, The Wine Bible
Shop With Confidence
With this knowledge in. your back pocket, select your glassware with confidence! Choose glasses that will showcase the best aspects of your particular wine. And have fun! Experiment using different styles of glass shapes and sizes with the same wine to see if the experience changes. You may find a new favorite glass!
Show Me The Glasses!
Where can you source luxury wine glasses? Vinum 55 is a proud retailer of both Riedel and Grassl wine glasses, and we are happy to source the best stems to suit your needs. View our collection of Grassl Glass stemware on the Wine Offers page of our website. You can order directly from the website, or reach out to Mike Dodgen at mike.dodgen@vinum55.com to order your stems. Cheers!