Choosing the Right Wine Glass

The Difference Between Wine Glasses in Practice

We all love to drink wine, that’s a fact. But when was the last time you thought about which wine glass to use when serving your favourite tipple? The honest truth is that most of us don’t really pay attention to this relevant detail, which is why I want to share some simple and useful tips for wine glasses with you this week.

If you have been out and about shopping recently, you have probably noticed a big variety of wine glasses with lots of different shapes, styles and prices. Glassware ranges have grown significantly in the past couple of decades – particularly when it comes to matching a wine glass with a specific grape variety. With so many grape varieties and wine styles available, choosing the right glass can be confusing, but what’s important to remember is that the wine is our main focus – the glassware can only improve our tasting experience up to a certain degree. So let’s put that stress away and go through some useful tips for wine glasses.

The first of our tips for wine glasses is to keep it simple. When it comes to wine glasses there are some many options, brands, styles, materials and prices to choose from. We recommend you start by getting a small set of wine glasses – maybe 4-6, that will work for your daily routine. That’s probably better than trying to get different glasses for each grape from the word go. You can check how the glasses react to your drinking habits in terms of styles over time. Try and work out how much sparkling, white, rosé, red, fortified or sweet wine you drink every week, as, after that, it will be easy to choose the best glass selection for you.

Wine Glasses with Stems

The best wine glasses are the ones with stems. Why this is so relevant? These are the traditional type of glasses that are ideal for tasting and serving wine in at any occasion. The trick of the stem is that it ensures your hand doesn’t touch the bulb of the glass, in turn avoiding warming it up as well as avoiding unsightly fingers marks on your glass. In addition, stems are perfect for seeing the wine and, when you use glasses with stems you can be more playful with your drink and be ready to ‘cheers’ at any time.

Sparkling and Generic Tall Glasses

The third of our tips for wine glasses is quite straightforward. Unless you don’t drink any sparkling wine, we suggest that you get your basic flute set of 4-6 glasses on top of your all-purpose wine glasses. The flute glasses are the best to serve your fizz, especially if you love to see the bubbles. Also, it’s always nice to start an occasion with a glass of fizz and then have another glass ready for a white or red wine as the celebration goes on.

Basic shapes of Wine Glasses

When it comes to the shapes of wines glasses there are a lot of different opinions – we would love to find out the effect the shapes have on your wine experience the next time you enjoy a glass! The shape of the glass affects the taste of the wine up to a certain point, but won’t change the taste dramatically, just improve it a bit. We are talking about the first sensation on your palate. The bulb of the glass influences the aroma intensity, or in plain English, your capacity to identify different aromas. Lastly, the rim of the glass affects how much wine gets onto your palate.

The Difference Between Wine Styles and Specific Glasses

The last of our tips for wine glasses is a list of wine styles matched with specific glassware. But before we jump onto that, let’s remind you of the two main glass shapes available, and their benefits. A small round bulb gets more aromas because of the bigger exposure with the wine surface and less contact with oxygen. This makes it the perfect glass for aromatic wines. A very large and narrow shape gets less aromas due to a smaller exposure with the wine surface and less contact with oxygen, making it the best glass for big red wines.

Sparkling wines like Prosecco, Cava and Champagne

Aromatic white wines, rosé wines, any other white wine and even some light red wines.  Sweet and fortified wines are also suitable for serving in these. Most red wines, but particularly full-bodied reds.