A half-decent wine from a perfect glass always
tastes better than a drop of the best stuff from a cheap IKEA toothbrush holder.
You cannot stress often enough how important it is for the enjoyment of the wine
to use the right glass.
Often enough, I´ve had the depressing
experience to be invited by friends who knew about my passion for wine, spared
no expense wine-wise – and served the good stuff in glasses from the local
flea market (with colouful engravings) or in rummers with printed “Greetings
from the Loreley”. Sad. The evening is dead, because obviously I can´t keep
my mouth shut.
The whole thing actually isn´t too pricey. I
think it is exagerrated to get equipped with glasses for “young white wine”,
“old white wine”, “Bordeaux” “Burgundy”, “Chianti”, “Wachau”
and what-not. It is totally sufficient to have a single series of – as a rule
– really good big red wine glasses (Riedel´s “Sommelier” or less
expensive: “Vinum”) and corresponding white wine glasses.
One hint: The glass factory Riedel in
Kufstein, Austria (worldwide market leader for first class glasses – rightly
so) has a selling point next to the factory, where you can get second, third and
sometimes fourth choice glasses for a quarter of the regular store price. Apart
from that, the factory is worth visiting (new and really impressing: a kind of
multimedia exhibition “Sinn-phonie”).
