Glasses and Decanters

Wine is meant to be enjoyed. That enjoyment includes many components besides the wine itself. It is hard to enjoy the wine if you drink it straight from the bottle. It is macho all right, but unless you drink to get drunk, it is hard to enjoy the wine that way. Yes, you can drink wine from the paper cup. But the color of the wine is an important part of the enjoyment, so my definite preference is the glasses. I also prefer the actual glasses with stems. By design, stemless glasses are meant to make wine more approachable and less snobby, but it doesn’t work for me. The aesthetics of the crystal glass and the sound those glasses make when you clink them are an essential part of the enjoyment and I refuse to ignore them. Do I also use a glass per varietal? No, I don’t go that far – I have a bigger glass for red and a smaller glass for white – that is about all I use daily. But I can tell you, I like taking my Radical Cabernet glasses out for special occasions and special wines. Plus, the Champagne flutes are overrated – but they still scream “celebration”, so yes, guilty as charged – I use the flutes as well. What you drink from matters.

And the decanter is just another tool. You are not using a decanter to show off. The decanter has a purpose – to let the wine breathe faster and to avoid the sediment. Similarly to the glasses, the decanter is enhancing your pleasure, by letting you smell and observe the wine much better than in the bottle. Also, there are never enough decanters…

Talk-A-Vino