George Sainstsbury in _Notes on a Cellar-Book_ (1920):

|

| Perhaps I may add something, though it may seem

| trivial or fantastic. I tried [a particular Hermitage]

| with various glasses, for it is quite wonderful what

| fancies wine has as to the receptacles in which it

| likes to be drunk. ... I always thought it went best

| in some that I got in the early seventies from

| Salviati's, before they became given to gaudiness

| and rococo.



[Sainstsbury relates, in his engaging conversational style, experiments with
other glasses, and his impressions of which glasses suited this wine best.]



Cwdrjx states the general issue excellently in my opinion (I excerpt him
below, as appendix), and may even understate how long the subject has been
raised (Sainstbury's popular book predated wine newsgroups by 62 years).
Sainstbury illustrates perfectly, I think, the broader situation of the
informed amateur (I mean that chiefly in the French sense of lover) of
something fine and complex (wine) who forms impressions about practical
realities (effect of wine glasses on taste and smell). Sainstbury's is an
_impressionistic_ view, and like other wine enthusiasts, or _amateurs_ of
practical things that are fine and complex, Saintsbury has not gone the
further (and as Cwdrjx wrote, difficult) distance to separate out the
"psychology"-- that is, separate out what he actually, demonstrably can
taste or smell from what he is comfortably convinced he can taste or smell.
The comfort factor often acts, and impedes people, even when inclined, from
going beyond impressionistic opinions, which again may be difficult anyway
for practical reasons unrelated to what anyone thinks. (The world of
high-fidelity audio is another and more passionate case, shown in vast
loquacious newsgroup exchanges starting with net.audio in the early 1980s,
and partly archived online.)



I've tasted and discussed glasses with some groups of people in the wine
trade, particularly the younger ones a few years ago when the recent market
for elegant wine glasses was burgeoning. Some of those people had satisfied
themselves of which glasses were tuned to which wines, with tentative
explanations (this element in the aroma preferring that altitude, and so
on). I myself have experienced the same wine smelling differently in
different glasses. For instance, not long ago I was finding a hint of
something like madeirization in one wine just a few years old, and a wine
merchant was not; our tasting glasses were differently shaped, and
scrupulously clean, and showed the different smell consistently. I don't
claim deep insight into this subject, only sensitivity to the mind's
fondness for assessing external reality into terms it likes, and hanging on
to those.



I can't abandon Sainstbury here without mentioning that he raised, in the
same distinctive style, such still-fashionable topics as the shapes of
Champagne glasses (comparing "the old tall `flutes' " to the "modern
ballet-girl-skirt inverted, which is supposed to have been one of the marks
of viciousness of the French Second Empire"), the chemical adulteration of
wines, and "corked" wines and the particular ability of some people, not
necessarily wine connoisseurs, to pick out the defect.



Cheers -- Max





"Cwdjrx _" in :

| I have lost count of the many times this subject has been

| discussed here. The results usually are about the same,

| with opinions covering everything between absolute yes

| and absolute no. Controlled scientific tests are difficult,

| and what few well controlled blind tests have been
| made do not seem to be give a complete answer yet.

| There is a lot of psychology involved here. It is somewhat

| like the Victorian obsession with the aphrodisiacal effects

| of foods such as caviar, oysters, etc. If you believed such

| foods had such properties, then you might think you
| experienced some effect after eating the food. ...