Drinks After Dark

The Glass as a Messenger

by Colleen Coplick on August 16th, 2008

Wine is the message. The glass is the messenger.

The senses are the first things that help you taste wine. Your eyes let you take everything in, and then your sense of touch. You feel a smooth round stem with Riedel.

There’s some controversy over stemless glasses, but have you noticed, that when you knock over a stemless glass, it weebles, wobbles and yet, it stands back up, thus “saving the wine, which is important”.

The Riesling glasses are designed to deliver the wine to a different place in your palate. The “everyday wine glass” is built for durability, and has a large rolled rim. The wine smells different; it smells flat. Boring. Like… nothing. Pouring that same Riesling back into the Riesling glass, and the scent is more powerful, it’s more intense. The nose is sharper, and the flavour is delivered more to the middle of your tongue.

What I assumed was a “red wine glass” and is a big bellied wine glass is opening up the buttery flavour of the Chardonnay. We poured the chardonnay into the everyday glass and you lose the buttery flavour. In the Riesling glass (which also works for zinfandel, sangovese, chianti and sauvignon blanc), the Chardonnay became more bitter, less open, less buttery and overall, not as good.

The fourth glass we have is another big bellied “bucket” as Riedel calls it, rather affectionately. Mr Riedel (the … fourth generation wine glass maker, i think) calls the typical red wine glass “the enemy of red wine”. This is a super soft crystal glass, which holds 1.05 litres of wine (!!!), but it’s soft enough that (a trained professional) can wobble the stem and squeeze the rim.

The Pinot Noir glass (which is a $140 stem!!!) we have was originally the Oregon Pinot Noir Glass because the Oregon wine makers wouldn’t stop bugging Riedel to make their own glass.

This glass looks for the tannins in the pinot noir. The tannins in pinot noir are notoriously hard to find and this glass opens up the tannins and adds to the beautiful mouth feel of this wine.

David Sanders, the lovely Riedel glass guy, keeps trying to get us to pour the wine from the glass it’s supposed to be in into the other glasses. He’s making the wine taste bad.

The Cabernet Savignon, which is normally a very tannin-y wine, has a glass that is hiding the tannins. The glass is called a Tannin Tamer. Pouring the Cab Sauv into the “pinot noir” glass, the tannin finder, brings out the tannins and makes it almost … astringent.

For the average wine drinker, the general rule of thumb is to buy the glass for the wine you enjoy the most. If you had to pick two to get, that would cross the widest variety of wines, get the Cabernet Sauvignon glass and the Riesling glass.

Like I said, I knew that Riedel glasses were made for the wine, but I had no idea that the wine would taste, smell and feel so differently in different glasses.

I am now officially a Riedel convert.

(image source: Megan Cole)

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