I enjoyed having Tempe Reichardt as a visitor and learning about the Gabriel Glas today. From a usability perspective, I love the idea of having one glass that is useful for all types of wine and that delivers a great drinking experience for the majority of consumers (not to mention, I LOVE dishwasher safe everything). Without knowing much of the science behind it, I believe that there probably is a glass that does a great job aerating wine, concentrating aroma, and coating the palate. I can believe that varietal specific glasses are probably more marketing than science. However, as I turn over the one-glass-fits-all idea, I wonder whether finding one perfect glass actually detracts from the overall wine drinking experience.
If you've been to Sonoma or Napa, you can probably relate to the following experience: You get home after a long day of tasting. You have a few new wine purchases in tow. You love the wine you bought but when you think about it, you can't remember what a single one of the wines taste like. However, you can remember what it was like to sit at the winery and drink the wine. You can remember the person who served it to you. You can remember the funny joke that your friend told. I find that I get attached to wines and wineries because they deliver a memorable, superior all around experience, not simply because the wine is the best in the world. The environment in which we consume wine plays a huge role in determining how we experience the wine. I happen to think that stemware is a component of that. Do you like the shape of the glass? How does it feel in your hand? Does it go with the overall aesthetic of the restaurant or dinner table? Does it make you feel adult? Knowledgeable? Serious? Festive? I'm not sure I'm ready to give up varied stemware in favor of one superior glass, even in the name of science and reason. I'm afraid I'll miss out on the way that glass makes me feel and makes me feel about the wine it holds.
Emily, I agree with your assessment and have Bottega del Vino flutes, Burgunder & Rosso Amarone glasses at home in addition to the Gabriel Glas line. They serve different functions-they are not mutually-exclusive.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this, during the presentation what Tempe explained about the evolution of the glasses (i.e. they game from the glass industry so they could sell more) made a lot of sense to me. That being said, there's something about having different stemware that's been engrained in me and it's going to be hard for me to change that behavior. I can't imagine popping a bottle of champagne and pouring it into a wide glass, nor do I want to necessarily take the time to explain to my guests why this glass is as good as that glass.
ReplyDeletePractically, when I'm at home having dinner and a glass of wine - fine. When I'm entertaining, I become a bit more hesitant. Is this rational? Not at all. Maybe I'm clinging to the nostalgia of having various stemware and feeling good about what each one of them mean.
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DeleteI have the same hesitations. Whether I'm hosting a wine event, or ordering a bottle of fine wine in a restaurant, the glass matters to me. Maybe its in part due to the marketing machine that promotes varietal-specific glasses, but I do feel there is a real perception that one glass can not fit all. We all know that a big part of the wine industry is perceived quality (vs. actual quality) through marketing, so I have a hard time believing that entrepreneurs like Tempe will be able to successfully convince a critical mass of wine consumers that one glass can rule them all.
DeleteI have the same hesitations. Whether I'm hosting a wine event, or ordering a bottle of fine wine in a restaurant, the glass matters to me. Maybe its in part due to the marketing machine that promotes varietal-specific glasses, but I do feel there is a real perception that one glass can not fit all. We all know that a big part of the wine industry is perceived quality (vs. actual quality) through marketing, so I have a hard time believing that entrepreneurs like Tempe will be able to successfully convince a critical mass of wine consumers that one glass can rule them all.
DeleteEmily, I agree with this assessment and thought that the restaurant sales channel was particularly baffling given that so many diners, who may not have sophisticated taste buds, still expect to see many different glasses at their place setting when they're ordering various types of wines throughout the evening. It is incredibly hard to break habits that are related to status and image, and even if it's in the best interest of a restaurant to serve all wines in the same glass, most patrons at fine dining establishments would expect the experience they're accustomed to. There's also something beautiful about the experience being inefficient. As Emily and Gabrielle said, the experience of wine isn't always rational.
ReplyDeleteAgreed-- Galloni, former lead wine critic for The Wine Advocate: “The sensory elements, including the visual ones, are really important...You really only taste a few sensations. The rest is smell and vision.” I also don't think anyone would argue that wine is about only the taste--it's about the visuals, the environment, the emotions--and the different glasses might be a part of that.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I totally agree when it comes to wine but have been thinking about how different this feels for beer. When Tempe was speaking about the glass and the "intuition" that created it, my reaction was annoyance because it just felt so pretentious and far from the experience I have with wine. Wine so often feels inaccessible, and discussing fancy "stems" in fancy terms was super confusing. Perhaps as I develop a more sophisticated palette this will begin to feel more important to my experience of wine, but in the status quo, different wine glasses have always been more ceremonial for me than anything else.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this is part of what I like about my beer snobbery. While a lot of the same intensity around flavor profiles exists in craft beer, learning about it and experiencing it feels very accessible. Tempe made me wonder about why there isn't quite as much variety in glasses for beer in day-to-day life as there is with wine. I love being able to keep nice pint glasses in my freezer and being able to pour all sorts of beers in them without wondering if I will embarrass myself by selecting the wrong glassware.
And then I did some research. I have certainly had different beers served in type-specific glassware, but that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. It's been interesting learning more about why different shapes of glasses are preferred for different types of beer but I'm thankful for the ease that comes with beer (http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/101/glassware/).
I agree with the points that have been made around visual components being a part of the experience and pleasure of drinking wine. While I personally do not have a huge problem giving up red vs. white wine glasses, I think i would have to draw the line at bubbles. There is something lovely, special and celebratory about the tall, thin champagne flute where you can see all the bubbles cheerfully making their way to the top.
ReplyDeleteI actually poured some bubbly into my new Gabriel Glass stem this weekend at a brunch and found myself (perhaps unreasonably) disappointed with the visual experience. The advantage of the shape for a red (spreading the liquid out at the bottom of the glass to aerate), completely robs bubbles of the lovely visual effect because most of the pour is sitting in the bottom of the glass where you can barely see it and appreciate. Toasting with the bubbles in this stem just wasn't the same.
I am so glad that somebody posted about this! Last year, our section hosted a wine-education event with Melissa Lavirinc Smith, a local sommelier and wine expert. While we focused on buying value wines and learning to taste, her comments about glasses was what really stuck with me.
ReplyDeleteDuring our session, she shared with us that for all of her major tasting events (she does many each year) and drinking at home with her friends, she only uses IKEA wine glasses. To be exact, she is referring to this $2 IKEA wine glass http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20154869/.
During our session, she showed us the famous and expensive Riedel glass, and remarked how the IKEA glass has the same bevel and angling to produce similar aeration and inhaling capabilities while sipping. There were other factors she mentioned, but I think that these two features were also mentioned by Tempe in discussing Gabriel Glas.
In the weeks afterward, I performed some informal wine tasting with Riedel glasses and the IKEA stems with my family members who proclaimed to be real wine experts, and I have to concur with Melissa - the IKEA stems were fantastic, and at their extremely low price point, it's hard to not choose them every time.
I am so glad that somebody posted about this! Last year, our section hosted a wine-education event with Melissa Lavirinc Smith, a local sommelier and wine expert. While we focused on buying value wines and learning to taste, her comments about glasses was what really stuck with me.
ReplyDeleteDuring our session, she shared with us that for all of her major tasting events (she does many each year) and drinking at home with her friends, she only uses IKEA wine glasses. To be exact, she is referring to this $2 IKEA wine glass http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20154869/.
During our session, she showed us the famous and expensive Riedel glass, and remarked how the IKEA glass has the same bevel and angling to produce similar aeration and inhaling capabilities while sipping. There were other factors she mentioned, but I think that these two features were also mentioned by Tempe in discussing Gabriel Glas.
In the weeks afterward, I performed some informal wine tasting with Riedel glasses and the IKEA stems with my family members who proclaimed to be real wine experts, and I have to concur with Melissa - the IKEA stems were fantastic, and at their extremely low price point, it's hard to not choose them every time.
I'll keep the echo to a minimum - I am happy to get the Gabriel-Glas stem, and think I'll find it very useful, but still look forward to having varietal stems when I'm at certain restaurants or opening up special bottles. It just adds to the experience for me.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to add this article to the conversation around champagne:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-15/the-tragic-flute-why-you-re-drinking-champagne-all-wrong.html
There's pretty much a version of this in major newspapers every year around New Years, but I remember this one in particular from last year. The main idea is that champagne producers agree that the flute is not the best stem to use to appreciate champagne, but there's no denying that it's the best stem for appreciating the visual spectacle of the champagne bubbles. One sommelier's commentary stands out to me:
"For Brian Kalliel, the sommelier at Mélisse -- a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Santa Monica, California, that boasts a roving Champagne cart -- it all boils down to expectations. 'I drink Champagne in something bigger,' Kalliel says, 'but to push that in the restaurant is a little bit snooty.' Leave the educating, he says, to 'Wine Spectator and places like that.'"
I'm surprised to hear a sommelier say that he'd leave Wine Spectator to do wine education - it seems like an opportunity for a restaurant to distinguish itself from others, offering a unique wine perspective as part of the dining experience as a whole.
I wanted to chime in on Kate’s and Thomas’s comments surrounding champagne flutes! Like Kate, I draw the line at giving up a special glass for my vin aux bulles: there is something so beautiful, even glamorous, about the image of a beautiful rosé champagne in an elegant stem. I actually prefer the French “coupe de champagne”—which looks more like a white wine glass, just narrower at the top (http://luxurylaunches.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Veuve-Clicquot-Ponsardin.jpg) —to the champagne flutes that we see at restaurants in America. Tempe briefly mentioned that the narrow, tall format of the flutes, with their tiny circumference, pounds the flavor into one spot at the back of one’s tongue. I had always assumed that was their purpose; that glassmakers created flutes in order to concentrate the effervescence of bubbly wine on your palate. But it seems from reading the article Thomas shared that champagne flutes actually weren’t invented until the mid twentieth century.
ReplyDeleteI’m very fond of the coupes I bought at Rothschild in Reims last year and take every opportunity to drink from them. I thought this was because I sentimentally preferred the shape, because it reminded me of that trip—but then I taste-tested bubbly from both my coupe and a more familiar flute, and indeed, it tastes a little softer, rounder, and more enjoyable from the French coupe.
The question is, though, will a coupe ever inspire a good rehearsal dinner toast? I think not.