How good are your glasses?
Ronan Sayburn, Gordon Ramsay’s head sommelier, passed on a very good tip to me recently. He said that if he was on holiday and passing a restaurant, he could usually tell if the wine and food would be any good simply by looking at the glasses on the tables.
How so? “Well,” he replied, “if the glasses are good quality then it should follow that the wine is going to be good too. And if the glasses and wine are good, the food should follow. Equally, the reverse is true. If the glasses are cheap and nasty, it usually means that it’s not going to be a good place to eat or drink.”
So what do you need to look out for when choosing your wine glasses?
The most important thing is the shape of the bowl. Ideally, it should be a tulip shape which is round at the bottom so that you can swirl and aerate the wine. And then it must taper at the top so that it acts as a sort of funnel so that you can nose it more effectively. And if it’s sparkling wine or Champagne that you are drinking, you need a more fluted style of glass.
The next most important thing is that it should be completely clear. Coloured glass obviously means that you can’t judge the colour or depth of the wine you are drinking. Personally, I don’t like cut glass either. Call me boring, but I like my glasses plain and my wines exciting.
What about size? Yes, size does matter when it comes to glassware (although biggest isn’t always best). And if you want to get really serious about it, so does the shape and form of the rim or lip of the glass. All of which explains why Riedel glasses are individually designed and shaped to suit a particular grape variety or style of wine. In total, Riedel have 150 different glasses for sparkling wines, still wines, fortified wines and spirits. No wonder the company categorically asserts that wine really does taste better in its ‘designated’ glass.
If this sounds a bit far-fetched, I did a tasting last year in London for the Financial Times with several of the UK’s leading sommeliers including Ronan Sayburn and Xavier Rousset, from Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons. We tested seven Riedel glasses with six different wines and discovered that in six out of eight flights of wines, the ‘correct’ Riedel glass came out on top.
So, apart from Riedel, who are the best brands when it comes to stemware?
The best known names are Waterford, Schott-Zwiesel, Spiegelau and Dartington. Like Riedel, none of the above come cheap — particularly if you are buying lead crystal.
However, unless you are a very serious aficionado drinking extremely expensive wines, my view is that it simply isn’t necessary to spend a fortune on glassware. For instance, in the past, I have bought some excellent all-purpose wine glasses from shops such as Habitat which tick all the boxes described above and weren’t too expensive. | |
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