Wine glasses - wonder or wank?

While on the subject of wine - for those who didn't/haven't read my first posting, it was also about wine - what is it with the whole wine 'glass' phenomena that seems to have hit the shelves (to use a term very loosely) lately? Yes, it has been around for a long time, yet there seems to be a resurgence that I just can't explain.

I think at last count, get ready for an exaggeration, Riedel had some 738 different glasses for wine. This is pretty amazing stuff. Considering the average person cant tell red from white, thinks the height of wine sophistication is spending up to $25 on a bottle (although there are some great drop's at $25) then isn't the whole "doesn't your wine deserve the best", that is the best glass to serve it in, just ... well crap?

Sure, don't get me wrong, serving a great or even half decent red in a coffee cup will somehow not really open up the wine as much as say a Riedel Vinum XL, and no I'm not on a name dropping fee for them, they just happen to be a glassware that I trust and personally use.

I know there is lots of science in the field of wine - glasses, decanters, gadgets to pour wine, storage, growth patterns, soil (terroir) etc, yet lets be honest the whole reinvention of glassware is just in the broader sense an advertising gimmick to sucker in the "home" wine snobs. I would easily bet that if I took any wine and set-up a table in the middle of a mall or market and got passers-by to try the same wine in different - yet similar - glasses they wouldn't know the difference. Of course they would not know the wine is the same, just asked to describe each wine they taste.

I'll be overly pessimistic and go for a 99.98% success rate - that is, they couldn't tell the difference.

You see, the problem with the whole wine game is that its based on the obvious. If you know the wine, or its heritage, or its background, or its maker, or its location, or its structure, or its ... well anything about that one particular wine you already have a preconceived notion of what to expect. Yes there are blind tastings etc., yet more often than not you turn up to 20 bottles of Shiraz all in front of you and you make a comment on them - knowing who they are.

Now, not to suggest otherwise, yet do you know, or can you name a single source - of notable quality - who said the 2006 Penfolds Grange was over-price cough medicine? No, well neither can I. Sure some differ, some gave it 97 out of 100 while others gave it 96, yet hey we'll let that one pass.

Wine is about the taste, the scent and how it all works on the palate. Not all, and in fact very few have a palate that can tell the difference between, as I say red and white wine, yet that doesn't mean that the level of nonsense in this business is not over blown and boarding on the corrupt - well that one is more directed at some of the critics than it is the wines.

So, back to glasses. You can argue until time stops that "glassware has been designed for specific grape DNA" yet really, who do you think buys this, and I don't mean the glasses I mean the advertising guff?

There was a brilliant story in the Australian Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine sometime back where they interviewed a famous sommelier in Paris about his (the restaurants) cellar, the wines, his experience, his thoughts and views on being a sommelier and in charge of one of the most impressive wine cellars in a restaurant, let-a-lone anywhere in the world. And there was remark he made which has stuck with me, and one which I couldn't agree with more, and the gist of what he said was:

... that it is often very disappointing to watch people buy an extremely rare and expensive bottle of wine, and they then go through the motions of tasting, sipping, commenting, swirling it, letting it sit, letting it breath etc., and all I can think is why don't you just enjoy it ...

And its this view I agree with. So long as the conditions are right: the wine is not corked (when will they just use screw-caps only?), has been kept well, decent glassware (not coffee cups), and an appropriate respect paid to the wine's taste do you just not sit back and forget all you know (or think you know) and just drink the dam stuff and enjoy it?