Do glasses matter?

The answer depends on your taste--its like buyng a plama TV or a big 48" standard.

to me for my own pleasure while I know Reidel & Spiegelau are custom made to maximize the aroma--how many bottles can you buy if you just bought a standard. stem.

I do have a set of the basic Riedel to tale to offlines because glassware is scarce in some restaurants in quality & and quantity

Have to say that in my experience glasses matter. Have some Riedel Vinum and some Sommelier and find that even between these there is most often a big difference. Wish I could say the Vinum came out best but it never happens that way. Other glasses fall short of both.

Indeed. I have a favorite glass ( a few actually) and a favorite chair and a favorite ashtray (cigar) and a favorite shirt, etc. None made by anyone you'd know. But sometimes I need them to get maximum contentment.

Myron

Can you ellaborate? What kind of difference do you find between the two Riedels?

Thanks,

Monika

I have lost count of the many times this subject has been discussed here. The results usually are about the same, with opinions covering everything between absolute yes and absolute no. Controlled scientific tests are difficult, and what few well controlled blind tests have been made do not seem to be give a complete answer yet. There is a lot of psychology involved here. It is somewhat like the Victorian obsession with the aphrodisiacal effects of foods such as caviar, oysters, etc. If you believed such foods had such properties, then you might think you experienced some effect after eating the food.

The best I can tell, the shape or compositon of the glass has little effect on the best mature wines. These have so much bouquet, that they often can be smelled acrrss the room. A large glass may help capture enough of the weak bouquet of a fairly ordinary wine, or a young one, especially if it is going through a dumb period. Note that even though Riedel makes a baby bathtub wine glass for Bordeaux that often is seen, they also make a much more normal sized glass for mature Bordeaux. At least at home, I do not drink fine wine until it is mature - I think it is just a waste of money to drink a great Bordeaux or Burgundy before it peaks, which sometimes can require decades. Thus I have very little need for over-sized glasses.

Reply to snipped-for-privacy@cwdjr.net .

George Sainstsbury in _Notes on a Cellar-Book_ (1920):

|

| Perhaps I may add something, though it may seem

| trivial or fantastic. I tried [a particular Hermitage]

| with various glasses, for it is quite wonderful what

| fancies wine has as to the receptacles in which it

| likes to be drunk. ... I always thought it went best

| in some that I got in the early seventies from

| Salviati's, before they became given to gaudiness

| and rococo.

[Sainstsbury relates, in his engaging conversational style, experiments with other glasses, and his impressions of which glasses suited this wine best.]

Cwdrjx states the general issue excellently in my opinion (I excerpt him below, as appendix), and may even understate how long the subject has been raised (Sainstbury's popular book predated wine newsgroups by 62 years). Sainstbury illustrates perfectly, I think, the broader situation of the informed amateur (I mean that chiefly in the French sense of lover) of something fine and complex (wine) who forms impressions about practical realities (effect of wine glasses on taste and smell). Sainstbury's is an _impressionistic_ view, and like other wine enthusiasts, or _amateurs_ of practical things that are fine and complex, Saintsbury has not gone the further (and as Cwdrjx wrote, difficult) distance to separate out the "psychology"-- that is, separate out what he actually, demonstrably can taste or smell from what he is comfortably convinced he can taste or smell. The comfort factor often acts, and impedes people, even when inclined, from going beyond impressionistic opinions, which again may be difficult anyway for practical reasons unrelated to what anyone thinks. (The world of high-fidelity audio is another and more passionate case, shown in vast loquacious newsgroup exchanges starting with net.audio in the early 1980s, and partly archived online.)

I've tasted and discussed glasses with some groups of people in the wine trade, particularly the younger ones a few years ago when the recent market for elegant wine glasses was burgeoning. Some of those people had satisfied themselves of which glasses were tuned to which wines, with tentative explanations (this element in the aroma preferring that altitude, and so on). I myself have experienced the same wine smelling differently in different glasses. For instance, not long ago I was finding a hint of something like madeirization in one wine just a few years old, and a wine merchant was not; our tasting glasses were differently shaped, and scrupulously clean, and showed the different smell consistently. I don't claim deep insight into this subject, only sensitivity to the mind's fondness for assessing external reality into terms it likes, and hanging on to those.

I can't abandon Sainstbury here without mentioning that he raised, in the same distinctive style, such still-fashionable topics as the shapes of Champagne glasses (comparing "the old tall `flutes' " to the "modern ballet-girl-skirt inverted, which is supposed to have been one of the marks of viciousness of the French Second Empire"), the chemical adulteration of wines, and "corked" wines and the particular ability of some people, not necessarily wine connoisseurs, to pick out the defect.

Cheers -- Max

"Cwdjrx _" in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3175.bay.webtv.net:

| I have lost count of the many times this subject has been

| discussed here. The results usually are about the same,

| with opinions covering everything between absolute yes

| and absolute no. Controlled scientific tests are difficult,

| and what few well controlled blind tests have been | made do not seem to be give a complete answer yet.

| There is a lot of psychology involved here. It is somewhat

| like the Victorian obsession with the aphrodisiacal effects

| of foods such as caviar, oysters, etc. If you believed such

| foods had such properties, then you might think you | experienced some effect after eating the food. ...

[Sorry. Micr*soft.]

George Sainstsbury in _Notes on a Cellar-Book_ (1920): | | Perhaps I may add something, though it may seem | trivial or fantastic. I tried [a particular Hermitage] | with various glasses, for it is quite wonderful what | fancies wine has as to the receptacles in which it | likes to be drunk. ... I always thought it went best | in some that I got in the early seventies from | Salviati's, before they became given to gaudiness | and rococo.

[Sainstsbury relates, in his engaging conversational style, experiments with other glasses, and his impressions of which glasses suited this wine best.]

Cwdrjx states the general issue excellently in my opinion (I excerpt him below, as appendix), and may even understate how long the subject has been raised (Sainstbury's popular book predated wine newsgroups by 62 years). Sainstbury illustrates perfectly, I think, the broader situation of the informed amateur (I mean that chiefly in the French sense of lover) of something fine and complex (wine) who forms impressions about practical realities (effect of wine glasses on taste and smell). Sainstbury's is an _impressionistic_ view, and like other wine enthusiasts, or _amateurs_ of practical things that are fine and complex, Saintsbury has not gone the further (and as Cwdrjx wrote, difficult) distance to separate out the "psychology"-- that is, separate out what he actually, demonstrably can taste or smell from what he is comfortably convinced he can taste or smell. The comfort factor often acts, and impedes people, even when inclined, from going beyond impressionistic opinions, which again may be difficult anyway for practical reasons unrelated to what anyone thinks. (The world of high-fidelity audio is another and more passionate case, shown in vast loquacious newsgroup exchanges starting with net.audio in the early 1980s, and partly archived online.)

I've tasted and discussed glasses with some groups of people in the wine trade, particularly the younger ones a few years ago when the recent market for elegant wine glasses was burgeoning. Some of those people had satisfied themselves of which glasses were tuned to which wines, with tentative explanations (this element in the aroma preferring that altitude, and so on). I myself have experienced the same wine smelling differently in different glasses. For instance, not long ago I was finding a hint of something like madeirization in one wine just a few years old, and a wine merchant was not; our tasting glasses were differently shaped, and scrupulously clean, and showed the different smell consistently. I don't claim deep insight into this subject, only sensitivity to the mind's fondness for modeling external reality into terms it likes, and hanging on to those.

I can't abandon Sainstbury here without mentioning that he raised, in the same distinctive style, such still-fashionable topics as the shapes of Champagne glasses (comparing "the old tall `flutes' " to the "modern ballet-girl-skirt inverted, which is supposed to have been one of the marks of viciousness of the French Second Empire"), the chemical adulteration of wines, and "corked" wines and the particular ability of some people, not necessarily wine connoisseurs, to pick out the defect.

Cheers -- Max

"Cwdjrx _" in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3175.bay.webtv.net: | I have lost count of the many times this subject has been | discussed here. The results usually are about the same, | with opinions covering everything between absolute yes | and absolute no. Controlled scientific tests are difficult, | and what few well controlled blind tests have been | made do not seem to be give a complete answer yet. | There is a lot of psychology involved here. It is somewhat | like the Victorian obsession with the aphrodisiacal effects | of foods such as caviar, oysters, etc. If you believed such | foods had such properties, then you might think you | experienced some effect after eating the food. ...