I want your opinion on the question: Do glasses matter? I'm thinking of
getting some nice glassware and I like the Tritan Forte or DIVA better than
Reidel or Spiegelau glasses, but will better stemware enhance a glass of
wine, and how so? I know Reidel, Spiegelau, and Tritan say so, but I'd like
an opinion from someone other than the crystal manufacturers.

Thanks,

Josh.

The answer depends on your taste--its like buyng a plama TV or a big 48"
standard.

to me for my own pleasure while I know Reidel & Spiegelau are custom made to
maximize the aroma--how many bottles can you buy if you just bought a
standard.
stem.

I do have a set of the basic Riedel to tale to offlines because glassware
is scarce in some restaurants in quality & and quantity

"Tater Salad" > wrote in message
...
> I want your opinion on the question: Do glasses matter? I'm thinking of
> getting some nice glassware and I like the Tritan Forte or DIVA better
than
> Reidel or Spiegelau glasses, but will better stemware enhance a glass of
> wine, and how so? I know Reidel, Spiegelau, and Tritan say so, but I'd
like
> an opinion from someone other than the crystal manufacturers.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josh.
>
>

Have to say that in my experience glasses matter.
Have some Riedel Vinum and some Sommelier and find that even between these
there is most often a big difference. Wish I could say the Vinum came out
best but it never happens that way. Other glasses fall short of both.


"Tater Salad" > wrote in message
...
>I want your opinion on the question: Do glasses matter? I'm thinking of
>getting some nice glassware and I like the Tritan Forte or DIVA better than
>Reidel or Spiegelau glasses, but will better stemware enhance a glass of
>wine, and how so? I know Reidel, Spiegelau, and Tritan say so, but I'd
>like an opinion from someone other than the crystal manufacturers.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Josh.
>

Can you ellaborate? What kind of difference do you find between the two
Riedels?

Thanks,

Monika

"wesrob" > wrote in message
...
> Have to say that in my experience glasses matter.
> Have some Riedel Vinum and some Sommelier and find that even between these
> there is most often a big difference. Wish I could say the Vinum came out
> best but it never happens that way. Other glasses fall short of both.
>
>
> "Tater Salad" > wrote in message
> ...
> >I want your opinion on the question: Do glasses matter? I'm thinking of
> >getting some nice glassware and I like the Tritan Forte or DIVA better
than
> >Reidel or Spiegelau glasses, but will better stemware enhance a glass of
> >wine, and how so? I know Reidel, Spiegelau, and Tritan say so, but I'd
> >like an opinion from someone other than the crystal manufacturers.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Josh.
> >
>
>

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.

The best I can tell, the shape or compositon of the glass has little
effect on the best mature wines. These have so much bouquet, that they
often can be smelled acrrss the room. A large glass may help capture
enough of the weak bouquet of a fairly ordinary wine, or a young one,
especially if it is going through a dumb period. Note that even though
Riedel makes a baby bathtub wine glass for Bordeaux that often is seen,
they also make a much more normal sized glass for mature Bordeaux. At
least at home, I do not drink fine wine until it is mature - I think it
is just a waste of money to drink a great Bordeaux or Burgundy before it
peaks, which sometimes can require decades. Thus I have very little need
for over-sized glasses.

Reply to .

Salut/Hi Tater Salad,

le/on Sat, 18 Jun 2005 20:23:18 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

>I want your opinion on the question: Do glasses matter? I'm thinking of
>getting some nice glassware and I like the Tritan Forte or DIVA better than
>Reidel or Spiegelau glasses, but will better stemware enhance a glass of
>wine, and how so? I know Reidel, Spiegelau, and Tritan say so, but I'd like
>an opinion from someone other than the crystal manufacturers.

No doubt about it, they do. That said, you don't need to go to the top whack
Riedel to maximise your dinking pleasure. Much will depend upon what kind of
wine you drink. Remember that top glasses show everything, faults and all.
So a Riedel Sommelier Cru Classé (or whatever they call it) will show up all
the faults of the random Cabernet Sauvignon from Bulgaria you put into it!!
(I'm exaggerating to make the point).

You don't say what part of the world you're in. I bought Berry Bros & Rudd
large and small wine glasses and use those 90% of the time for my decent
wines. I use INAO standard tasting glasses for all my everyday drinking.
They're inexpensive, show off my wines nicely and wash in the dish washer!
--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website

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. ...

[Sorry. Micr*soft.]


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 modeling 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. ...