The 411 on Wine Glasses

Hey guys, this is Joe Campanale, here with Jordan Salcito, for eHow.com, and today we are going to talk about our favorite glassware to pair with your favorite wines. When choosing glassware for a wine, there are a few things that you always want to remember. The first, and most important thing, is that your glass should be absolutely clear so that you can see your wine. Number two, I really like wine glasses that have a great stem. This here is called a stemless glass. As you see, it has no stem. This is a perfect glass for water. I choose not to serve any wine in that, at all. The other thing that you want to look for in a glass is for the top of the glass to be more narrow that the widest portion of it. At the widest part, you'll be able to put all of your wine in here, and when you swirl it, you want to make sure that the wine isn't going to escape. And that's why the top is going to be more narrow. And then, you just need a glass that is large enough so that you can pour a decent pour for your wine and you still have some room at the top for swirling. Now Jordan, what do you like to do for, if you're at home? Do you have a different glass for each wine? I know there's such a huge array of glassware out there. You know, we do have a lot of glassware at my house. I bet you do, but do you think it's necessary for most people to have? No, I don't. I mean, I think you see so many different types of glassware. If you have, at Crown, we call this an all-purpose white, or an all-purpose red. I do think that certain grapes do benefit from a little bit more air, so a glass like this one right here, this red wine glass. So, red wines have tannins. Tannins do something called polymerize, which is where they all link together, and they become soft and silky with exposure to oxygen. And, so that's why you have a bigger bowl here. That's one of the reasons why you have a bigger bowl. Also, you give the wine a little bit of a chance to open up with that exposure to oxygen so that you do get the benefit of all of those aromatics when you take a sip from that glass. The other one, so, Joe and I were talking a little bit about the champagne flutes, and do you need a champagne flute? And we were both just saying that when we drink champagne, we actually rarely drink it from a champagne glass. We actually use a white wine glass because, for a few different reasons. One is because, well, Joe, you want to take it from here? Oh, sure. I mean, the champagne flute is the ideal glass for showcasing all of the beautiful bubbles in your sparkling wine. But, if you really want to taste the wine and understand it and appreciate it, the champagne flute is terrible because you're going to fill it up all the way to the top, and it has a very small surface area, so you really can't get much out of it. Though, you can see all of the beautiful bubbles. We really like to drink our wines out of either a white wine or red wine glass. And, I say our wines because sparkling wines are just wines that happen to have bubbles in them. It's a nice added textural feature to your wines. So, if it's a good sparkling wine, it's going to showcase really, really well in either one of those glasses. And then, we have one other really interesting glass here. This is called a tulip glass, and it's used for after-dinner drinks, especially high alcohol after-dinner drinks like grappa or brandy. And, the idea here is that when you have very high alcohol spirit, you don't want to swirl it. With wines, you swirl so that you can get all of the wine to come to the top, and you'll vaporize all of the really aromatic particles in the wine. But, in a spirit, if you do the same thing, you're going to really singe your nose because you're going to vaporize all of the alcohol esters, which are the flavor compounds. So, this glass will concentrate the flavor particles and leave some of those more astringent alcohol esters, or alcohol flavors, down in the glass. So, this is a really nice glass to have. But, really, if you're going to have just one glass, I would say choose something either like this, which we shorthand called a white wine glass, or maybe a Riesling glass even. Or this, which we can call a Bordeaux glass, or really, an all-purpose glass. And if you say an AP glass, or an all-purpose glass, in the industry, there's a good reason for it because a glass like this will do everything for you. So remember, when choosing glassware for your home, the first thing to remember is to have a glass with a stem, number one. It should be clear so you can see the wine. The top should be more narrow than the widest part so that you can swirl it and the wine won't fall out. And it should be of a good enough size so you can pour your friends a pretty hefty pour, but without overflowing the glass. And, my favorite wine glass is always a full one. And so, we're Jordan Salcito and Joe Campanale. Tune into eHow for more. Cheers.