Free Wine Class: How To Choose The Correct Wine Glass

Today I'd like to offer you some quality advice on the best way to choose wine glasses. It may not sound like that big of a deal but will come in handy the next time you are hosting a dinner or a cocktail party. Just imagine for a second that you are just about ready to serve your wine; but just before you set the table, fear starts to set in. Just what glasses should you put on the table? There is a method to the madness of different wine glass shapes. Let me tell you step by step which wine is preferred to go in which glass so you’ll have no fear whatsoever the next time you set your table for a great dinner with a food and wine pairing.

White Wines:
Now if you’re looking for white wines, you need a glass with a little bit more narrow opening. So this is a traditional wine glass. This would be good for white wines and red wines but it will be good for white wines in that the narrower the opening, the better because white wines don’t need as much aeration as red wine does but they have more delicate flavour. You can definitely smell a red wine from six inches away; you know the smells are coming out of that wine. I can smell these red wines now and I haven’t even put my nose in the glass. But white wines, particularly the lighter ones, you are getting into a sense of apricots, and lemons, light-citrus. You want to get every single piece of that flavour from the wine into your nose so when you’re drinking it, you’ll look for a narrower opening so when you smell it, all those aromas are trapped inside the glass by the narrow opening and they are not allowed to dissipate into the surrounding table area as they would be if there was a wide opening.

Red Wines:

Let’s just stop and think for a second. Take red wines for example. Typically Red wines are bigger, they have more tannins, they open up slower and sometimes they have to age for years in the bottle before they resemble anything remotely drinkable. They also have big flavours, they need a lot of air put in to them, (usually achieved by swirling), they need to be decanted, and finally; they usually require a lot more air than your typical white wine. Red wines need a big surface area so more air gets to them and they need a big bowl like this so when you swirl them, more wine can get contact with air. So if you’re serving a red wine, look for a glass that has a big bottom on it. This glass is also another good glass for good red wine but it does have not so much a big bottom as this traditional glass, but it does have a lot of volume in the glass so you can definitely aerate the wine better.

Sparkling wines:
In the first part of the last century; people liked their sparkling wines were sweeter than anything by today's standards. So there a wasn't a need to seek out soft, delicate flavours that would be in a small opening to a wine glass. So if you’re looking for sparkling wines, there are two kinds. There is dry which would go in a tall champagne slue and a sweeter sparkling wine can go either in a champagne slue or it can go in one of those bowl sized traditional champagne glasses.

So now that we have gone through the set of wine glasses and what wines they would traditionally be served in each glass, let’s ask ourselves some questions to kind of test what we know.

Would you consider owning more than one type of wine glass?

This would be your typical entry level wine glass that will be good for all wines. Are you going to consider owning certain types of different wine glasses based on the types of wine you would want to serve and which types of wine glasses do you think should be in your kitchen?

Would you invest in a top of the line Riedel glass or would you invest in maybe more glasses for the same price in different shapes at a lower price point?

And last, would you buy the more expensive glasses or instead would you want to invest in stronger, more economical glasses?

To find out more about red or white wine, or to just dive in an order a case; please visit us at www.bordeaux-undiscovered.co.uk

Image credit: Martin Cathrae