Choosing the Right Wine Glasses

by Gloria Philips Expert Blogger Choosing the best glasses entails six points of consideration: size, shape, design, weight, material and aesthetics.

The dimensions of the glass is dependent upon what type of wine you want to drink from this. Most of the time, red wine glasses are bigger than white wine glasses, and the ones meant for top quality wines are bigger than those utilized for everyday wines.

Personally, I personally use a 17 oz.(480 ml.) capacity glass for ordinary red wines, along with a 12 2/3 oz. (360 ml.) one for whites. When it comes to Bordeaux, as well as other tannic, full-bodied, top quality reds, I personally use a 23 oz. (650 ml.) glass which was made with Bordeaux especially in mind. I obviously don't fill my Bordeaux, or some other wine glass, towards the brim. For starters, given that a typical wine bottle only contains 750 ml. of wine, there wouldn't be considerably left for anybody else to drink should i did, as well as for another, both large dimensions of the glass and the truth that it's widest at its midway point enable the wine to "breathe" by affording a broad area of wine to stay in connection with the environment to be able to promote oxidation. Oxidation helps you to soften the tannins of the powerful red that may otherwise be overly harsh, and allows you to more fully feel the complexity and other flavors found in a noble red. White wine, however, has far fewer tannins, and usually speaking, will not take advantage of oxidation. A reduced glass can also be better for whites as they are served chilled. Obviously, it requires longer to drink a bigger amount of wine, and you would like to drink up each glass of white wine before it features a opportunity to become overly warm. One white wine which is an exception to those rules is okay white Burgundy, like Chablis or Montrachet. These very good quality whites do take advantage of contact with the environment, and therefore are best served in the temperature of standard red wines, from 55 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Based on the quality level, I serve white Burgundy, as well as other top quality Chardonnays, in 14 4/5 oz. (420 ml.) glasses or my 17 oz. red wine glasses.

The biggest glasses are generally restricted to fine Burgundy. I personally use 26 1/2 oz. (750 ml.) glasses, but I've seen Burgundy glasses the size of 31 3/4 oz. (900 ml). But a conversation of Burgundy glasses really brings us more in to the arena of shape than size. Burgundy is really a rather delicate and highly aromatic red. Like Bordeaux, Burgundy is generally drunk form glasses designed especially for it. They may be balloon shaped: very wide at the center, but tapering as much as a relatively narrow opening in the rim. The wide middle creates ample area for your aroma to waft up from, as the narrow top keeps the wonderful Burgundy bouquet within the glass, preventing it from dissipating to enable you to fully appreciate it.

Another kind of uniquely shaped wine glass is definitely the champagne flute. They may have narrow, tall bowls to avoid their bubbles from dissipating to quickly. Tulip shaped Champagne flutes are superior to straight-sided or trumpet-shaped ones because, as is the situation with many wine glasses, the narrower mouth serves to pay attention the bouquet within the glass. Talking about shape generally, I favor diamond-shaped glasses. They appear nice, as well as an benefit of the diamond design is the fact that it's easy to understand in which the widest reason for the glass is, the indicate that your wine glass ought to be filled.

So far as design goes, traditional, long-stemmed glasses are certainly better than stemless glasses. The stem serves several important functions. First, by lifting the glass up off of the table, it allows you to view the colour of the wine. Secondly, it makes it much simpler to swirl the wine within the glass to aerate it and obtain a sense of the quantity of body the wine has because it drips down again the edges from the glass. Thirdly, this is a convenient handle that prevents your hands starting to warm up the wine, as well as your fingers smudging in the glass.

Weight and balance can also be important because you will want glass that feels good within your hand. This can be a subjective area, however i personally don't like heavy wine glasses, therefore i prefer ones produced from thin glass. A thin rim can also be more pleasing to drink from. There exists a problem with thin glass though, which can cause inconvenience and added expense: it chips and breaks easily. A means around this issue is to purchase glasses reinforced with titanium instead of lead. Titanium wine glasses are not just stronger than their leaded counterparts, also, they are lighter and keep their clarity better.

Regarding material, you certainly want to choose fine Austrian or German crystal. That's not really as expensive because it sounds. You may get beautiful, elegant, machine-made crystal from big name producers at good prices, particularly if you look around on the web. Obviously, their top quality hand blown glasses are usually very pricey, but it's not required pay reasonably limited when you are able become very nice glasses for a lot less, such as the titanium ones.

That can bring us finally to aesthetics, by far the most subjective section of all. It's an essential one though because, in the end, the entire reason for nice wine glasses would be to work as a classy foil for whatever wine you are actually pouring, so aesthetics is equally as important a factor as functionality. Basically, I'd say choose how much you would like to invest in wine glasses and obtain those that you believe would be the nicest among the ones that fall affordable. It's easy to purchase a different shape and size of glass for every famous kind of wine, but that's overkill, within my humble opinion. I can't see any reason to purchase a unique glass for Syrah, for instance. If you're using a very good quality Syrah, just like a Hermitage or Penfolds Grange, you need to serve it in Bordeaux glasses. If it's a far more humble version of the popular varietal, you can easily use regular red wine glasses. The same thing goes for other powerful, full-bodied reds. When it comes to an excellent Pinot Noir, you need to use Burgundy glasses because Burgundy itself is made of Pinot Noir grapes. If it's a far more ordinary Pinot Noir, regular red wine glasses really are a better option since the high-capacity Burgundy glasses will simply make the wine's ordinariness more apparent.

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Created on Jul 4th 2019 08:14. Viewed 226 times.

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