If you're ever in need of a working definition of passive aggression, try this on: I buy my friends nice glassware as housewarming gifts so I can confidently take wine to their house knowing I won't need to drink it out of a mug.

 

One of the things that often gets overlooked in wine consumption is the importance of the glass itself. 

If you've got any interest in drinking more thoughtfully, then your first step should be checking in on your glassware. Consistently it gets relegated to the bottom of the 'wine tools' list - it is by far the most important piece of kit you'll own (that isn't actually wine itself). 

I'm not here to advocate for expensive glassware. I think above twenty dollars a stem it becomes about something else; decorative, status-adjacent, emotion-driven, and a space for celebrity somms to flex their egos and cash in on their cache. 

My concern is what's lurking in your cupboard - your glass goblets, your stemless stemware, the miss matched coke-bottle-thick wine glasses you've clutched on the stumble home from the local boozer over the years. Bad glassware will under-represent the wine you're drinking. And if you're putting time, effort, and money into what's in the glass, you're selling yourself short if that glass isn't up to scratch. 

But there's good news: a good wine glass is inexpensive and will serve all purposes (yep, you can ditch the flute for your fizz). 

So, what does a good glass look like? The make up of a universal glass is pretty straight forward. 

1. It has a stem. Stemless glassware gets grubby with your fingerprints making the wine harder to see, and your hands will affect the temperature of the liquid in the glass. It will also place your hands closer to your nose, so they'll dilute the aromatics in the glass. 
2. It has a wider bowl than it does opening. This focuses the aroma at the opening, where you'll be doing all your sniffing (and sniffing is essential to tasting). The wide bowl allows for greater surface area, which increases the wines contact with oxygen, which makes it more expressive. 
3. It's made of thin glass. This is less practical and more about feel. People say it delivers wine into your mouth easier and smoother, but I don't really buy that. I do know that I like thin glassware because I can better see the wine, and I find it easier to whip it around in my hand to swirl the wine before I smell it. 
4. It has a straight edge from the widest part of the bowl to the opening. This is again a personal preference (see the glassware pictured). I think it does deliver wine more evenly to your mouth, where as glassware with a rounded edge delivers more wine to the front of your mouth.

Do I need a different glass for different varietals?

No. Certainly not yet, anyway. Maybe when you start studying for your Master of Wine exam you can beef up your cup draw with a few varietal specific glasses. I think the variety of glassware we see is largely a marketing effort to get us to over-consume. Sure, if you are out dropping a couple grand on a single bottle of Grand Cru Burgundy then pick up a pair of burgundy glasses while you're at it. But for the yous and the mes of the world, your basic universal will cut it. 

So, what should you buy? 

Head in to a local hospitality supply store and see what's what (fair warning, if you've got any interest in cooking you'll buy heaps of stuff you don't need). Here's an $8 cup from Hotel Agencies that I have in my house. 

Finally, it's worth noting that wine isn't always designed to be the centre of attention - in fact that would be insufferable - and on those occasions, your stemless glasses or even your favourite mug will do the trick just fine. 

 

 

NB: don't fill your glass too full. About 90mls will allow you to properly slosh the wine around in your glass and give it a bit of aeration. This is often referred to as 'working the wine in the glass', and is a handy trick when drinking something that needs a bit of oxygen in its lungs.