Finally I took a plunge and bought a tasting set from Riedel (click here) - five varietal-specific glasses on a budget. These are from the "O" series, which is their collection of stemware without stems! I do love stems on my wine glasses, but at $50 for one tasting set, it is a bargain and a good way to discover whether grape-specific glasses really enhance the wine or it is just an elaborate marketing campaign to get people to spend more on fancy stemware.
I ordered two sets on Williams-Sonoma website, but unfortunately one arrived damaged. And, as a side note, it is certainly Williams-Sonoma's fault. The damage was clearly done before they even packed the box, so how crappy of them to ship an already damaged product! And then it took them three (!) whole days to get back to me about the replacement. They usually have very good customer service, but they really dropped the ball this time. Disappointing. But at least one set is okay, so we can proceed with this experiment.
The set contains two glasses for whites: one for Chardonnay and one for Riesling, and three red wine glasses: Merlot/Cabernet, Syrah, and Pinot Noir. The bottom of each glass has etching of the wines, for which it is meant.
I am willing to entertain the notion that shape matters. There are three senses involved in tasting wine - vision, smell and taste, and shape of the glass can certainly affect them. I think the nose will be affected most by change in shape of the glass - although little explanation provided in the materials that came with the tasting set, it is my understanding that the shape of the glass is mostly intended at directing the aromas of the wine properly to the nose. Of course, when we taste something, a sense of smell still plays a role, so it is quite possible that there is a difference in the glasses we use in the overall experience of the wine. But at the same time, we still live in a market economy, so this could be nothing but a marketing strategy. The only way to convince me is for me to try this out.
Now that we have these special glasses, I had to dig into our little wine collection and select appropriate wines. It so happened that I did not have a Riesling and I had to buy one. It is from Germany. But the other four wines, completely unintentionally, all are Californian.
My intent is not to get drunk, but simply taste just a bit of each wine. We are also tasting from our usual glasses along the new Riedel ones. That is the surest way to see if there is in fact a difference in how we experience the wine. There is a bit of mental element to this experiment - the knowledge that varietal-specific glasses are supposed to be better. But it will be harder to do a blind tasting (unless somebody else holds the glass for you as you drink, which certainly will make swerving and sniffing hard, and blind tasting would literally have to be blind) to eliminate this mental factor, so we just have to try to be as objective as possible.
For tasting multiple wines, some neutral food is needed to remove the taste of the previous wine as well as absorb the alcohol so that you stay as sober as possible to do a proper evaluation for each wine as the tasting progresses. I will toast few slices of French bread; crackers are a good way to go in this situation as well. And then, of course, a glass of water and some time between each of the wines are in order.
Let's begin!
Chardonnay
I really went into this very skeptical. But son of a gun! It does make a difference! As you can see, the Chardonnay-specific glass has a very much different shape from the usual glass we use for white wine. Riedel's glass so very wide - it was actually hard to hold. That is why wine glasses have stems and the reason I am not a fan of this "O" series. But back to the wine. The difference was, of course, on the nose. I first smelled and tasted wine from our basic glass, then had some water and waited a minute before proceeding to the Riedel Chardonnay glass. I have read in one of the books on wine that one needs to give some time before sniffs - if you are smelling wine continuously, your nose becomes ambivalent to the finer notes of the aromas of the wine. So, after some wait, I tasted from Riedel's glass and I definitely smelled more notes in the Chardonnay in the Riedel glass. Wow! I did not expect that.
Riesling
With Riesling, there was barely any difference, but I think it is purely because my usual white wine glass is so similar to Riedel's Riesling-specific glass. So if we were to switch to Rieslings, and, as per the etching on the bottom of the glass, also Sauvignon Blancs, we are all set with our existing white wine glasses.
Syrah
For Syrah, the difference was more subtle than Chardonnay, but more pronounced than Riesling. Riedel's Syrah/Shiraz glass is also suggested for other similar grapes: Carmenere, Grenache, Malbec, Mourvedre, and Tempranillo. So far, Riedel's grape-specific glasses do make a difference for the better. And I am trying to be very objective here, as we don't want to be buying more stemware - where does one keep a set of different glasses for each grape?! Not to mention the cost...
Merlot
This was by far the best improvement. Merlot was so much better in the Riedel's glass - it was much more rounded and smooth on the nose than in our usual red wine glass. Merlot glass is also suggested for Cabernet and Cabernet Franc.
Pinot Noir
And lastly, Pinot Noir-specific glass (also suggested for Nebbiolo) had almost no advantage over our usual red wine glass, but just like with Riesling, the simple reason is that our usual glass is already very close to Riedel's shape for this grape.
Conclusion
Which glass to use is certainly a matter of taste. Literally. Shyam is much less of a wine person than me, and he barely noticed any difference, except in Merlot case. So if you are considering investing in grape-specific stemware, certainly do a tasting first. You may not notice a difference, or you may discover that what you already have is good enough for your favorite wines. But I am finally convinced that grape/varietal-specific glasses are not just a marketing hype, but is in fact an improvement in tasting a specific varietal wine. There are, of course, still many question that this experiment didn't resolve. What about blends? Many wines contain more than a single grape variety. Which glass to choose for such a wine. And while with Old World wines, there are restrictions by law on which grapes and in which proportion to blend by region (Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc), New World is not subjected to such limitations. So while there are, for example, Bordeaux-specific glasses, which glass do I use for a new combination of various grapes? And so on... Since in the end, it is a matter of individual's taste, your taste, if there is no suggested answer from the expert, do taste, try various options, experiment! This is what we do and this is certainly fun!
Speaking of hype vs fact, you might have noticed in the first photo in this post that we now have two aerators. I did talk about aerator I had in my previous post on wine (click here), and recently I also purchased a White Wine Aerator.
The box does state that it is exclusively for white wines, but visual inspection yielded no differences from the "exclusively red" aerator I already had. Only difference between two sets is the white vs black color, and red wine aerator has a sediment filter where white doesn't. It is nice to have two aerators for the two different types of wine looking slightly different (white vs black), but as seemingly they are not doing the job any differently, you can save yourself some money here, if you are considering acquiring one.
Overall, this was an awesome experiment and I am now convinced. We are not going and buying all the various grape-specific glasses now, but if you prefer to drink just one specific kind of wine, it might be worthwhile for you to get the best glass for that variety. But don't take my world for it! As drinking wine is a matter of taste, the best choice you can make is based on your own taste, so you have to try it out yourself and decide for yourself.
For now, cheers and a good night!
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