The Lemon Fool

Following the discussion of beer glasses, I wonder if folks have any thoughts about wine glasses?

I'm inspired to ask by my experience at a Thai restaurant this evening. We drank a Pinot Grigio, and the glasses supplied were huge - maybe as much as a half-litre, and rounded in the manner of a brandy/cognac glass. My first reaction to those glasses was mild amusement: even if they might have done nicely for a rich red with a bouquet, they were surely way OTT for a dry white! But they helped the wine taste superb, bringing out the delicious but delicate flavours at their best!

At home I have ordinarily-large (250ml) wine glasses of regular shape, as well as tumblers (for authentic Italian wine-drinking). After tonight I could be tempted to seek out something bigger and rounder!

We've had various threads about this on TMF. You have to remember that most of what you "taste" is in fact perceived in your nose, which means the glass needs to curve inwards towards the top (to hold the aroma) and it wants to be more air than liquid - say 40% liquid? Which in turn doesn't give you much flipping wine in a 25cl glass!

Unless you are afflicted with advanced Riedelphilia (I have friends who are badly infected) then a good general rule is to have white glasses ~35cl and red glasses ~45cl. And decanters - even if they're just cheap carafes.

As some may remember, I scored a load of really nice soda-glass glasses of a bit over 45cl from Homebase a while back, which they were selling off at something daft like 75p/glass. They're not as nice as proper crystal - but I don't worry about getting them out on occasions where I might fear for the Riedels! A friend once lost two Riedel decanters in an evening, which was painful.

Hallucigenia wrote:A friend once lost two Riedel decanters in an evening, which was painful.

What happened, did he drop them on his foot?

All the best, Si