Mythbusters: No Wine Glass Per Varietal Needed

Ep 153

Do you really need a different wine glass for every single varietal you drink?

In this Mythbusters episode, I’m tackling the idea that you need a Pinot Noir glass, a Cabernet glass, a Riesling glass, and basically an entire cabinet dedicated to stemware. Yes, glass shape does matter. There is actual science behind how aroma travels and how the bowl affects flavor. But no, you do not need one glass per varietal.

In this episode, I break down what actually makes a difference, why bowl shape matters more than having a separate glass for every grape, and the simple way to think about choosing a glass. I’ll walk you through the three types of glasses that will cover almost everything you drink, from Bordeaux and Burgundy styles to narrower Riesling glasses and when a universal wine glass makes sense.

So if you’ve ever wondered whether you’re using the “right” wine glass and want to cut through the marketing to what actually matters, this episode is for you.

Thank you to our exclusive sponsor, Last Bubbles, for sponsoring this episode. Download the Last Bubbles app or go to www.lastbubbles.com and use code CORKANDFIZZ for 10% off your order! (And be sure to sign up for their mailing list so you never miss a bottle!)

Resources:

Elevating Everyday Wine with Hand-Blown Glasvin Wine Glasses w/ David Kong - https://www.corkandfizz.com/blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-43

Episode Highlights:

• The real science behind wine glass shape
• Why bowl size matters
• Stem vs stemless truth
• The 3 wine glasses that cover everything
• When to use a universal wine glass
• Why you shouldn’t overfill your wine glass

Transcript

0:00

If you love sparkling wine as much as I do, you'll love today's sponsor, Last Bubbles. They feature one handpicked bottle of champagne, Prosecco, or other bubbly every day at up to 70% off. I'll share more later, but for now, be sure to download the Last Bubbles app or go to lastbubbles.com and use code CorkandFizz for 10% off. Interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. Welcome to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Hailey Bohlman, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the Seattle-based wine tasting business Cork and Fizz. It is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun. You can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight and so much more. Whether you're a casual wine sipper or a total cork dork like myself, this podcast is for you. So grab yourself a glass and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine podcast. Today we have another episode of the Mythbuster miniseries where I debunk wine myths, new and old, and give you the straight facts. Though, if you've been listening for a while, you've probably learned I throw in a couple of my opinions here in there as well. And honestly, I mean, this is my podcast, so there's probably going to be a little bit of bias happening. But you're here and listening, and I'm always down to hear your thoughts on what I'm talking about and whether you agree, disagree, have questions. I would love to talk about it. Obviously. While you're listening to this, this is a one-way communication, but I would love to open it up, make it a two-way communication. Come find me on Instagram. I'm @corkandfizz, or you can send me an email, haley@corkandfizz.com. Now today's myth that we are busting is that you need a different wine glass for each kind of wine. So if you were worried that you needed to start building out your wine glass collection, don't worry about it. We're going to talk about why that's not necessary. And I'm gonna give you some recommendations for what type of wine glasses I would recommend getting. Just as I've mentioned with many of these myth-busting episodes, these are a little shorter than normal. I am recording a bunch of these as I prepare for my maternity leave. So as you're listening to this, I'm probably on maternity leave. So you may notice they're a little shorter than normal. If you are bored and you wanna hear more of my voice, you can always check out the backlog. We are. At episode 153 right now, that means I have 152 other episodes that you can enjoy. But for now, let's focus on this episode and let's talk a little bit more about the myth that you need a different wine glass for each kind of wine. This is another one of those myths that's sort of built on facts. So the fact is the shape of your wine glass can influence the flavor of the wine. However, and this is where maybe like there's some science and some opinion going on here. I don't think it's so fine-tuned that you need a different glass for each kind of wine, like a Pinot Noir glass, a Cabernet Sauvignon glass, a Riesling glass, a Syrah glass, a Merlot glass, right? You don't need one for each varietal. And honestly, what I'm going to teach you at the end of this is that I think that's just like the wrong way of thinking about it. Like, you don't want one for each varietal, but we're going to talk about what are the different types of wine glasses and how they can impact your wine. And I will say, I don't even think it's as simple as just a red wine glass versus a white wine glass. And again, we'll get into this more. I'm guessing this myth came about because many companies started making wine glasses for specific varieties and naming them as such. It was just the easiest way to communicate what type of wine this glass would be good for. It's a great marketing or sales technique. It's one of those, I don't know the difference between them. Sorry to all my marketers and my salespeople. And there's no harm in getting those glasses if you love them, but I'm here to tell you, you don't need to. Just a quick reminder, if you are not on my mailing list yet, what are you waiting for? I would love for you to join. When you do, you'll get a free shopping guide that has 15 of my favorite wines under $15. Head to corkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips, recommendations, special offers, and so much more. Now let's get back to the show. Okay, let's start with the fact that the shape of your wine glass can influence the flavor of your wine, but let's dive into what that actually means. Let's start with the basics. Wine is all about aromas. So you need a glass that will allow you to experience aromas. Now here's the part where there's some factual information and you're not just getting opinions or kind of biased facts from me. In 2015, there was a Japanese medical group that used a special camera to record images of ethanol vapors in different glasses. When you are smelling different aromas in your wine, what you are smelling are those aroma particles that are traveling on the ethanol or the alcohol as it evaporates from the glass. So they were basically recording and getting images of the alcohol evaporating from the glass. In their study, the research group showed how different glass shapes affect the density and the position of the vapors at the opening of the various glasses. So yes, it is a real science how your wine glass affects your wine. So due to this, just thinking about the fact that we want to be able to experience aromas, you want to avoid, when you're drinking wine, first, you wanna avoid the non-wine glasses, the ones that are cocktail glasses, the lowball or highball, just regular kind of like drinking cups. You need something that has that telltale bowl shape at the bottom. It is honestly like, I try not to be too picky about my glassware, But it is probably one of my biggest pet peeves when I go to a restaurant, I order a glass of wine and they bring it out to me in like a Scotch glass or like a lowball glass, cuz it's just, that's, that's not giving the wine a chance. Even this is one of those things that I will hold strong on. You need to have some sort of bowl shape to your wine. And here's the other thing you need to keep in mind the glass should only ever be filled at most about halfway or maybe two-thirds. You should never fill a wine glass more than that because again, you're not leaving room for that aroma. That is the most important part of the wine. So again, another point against that Scotch glass because, you know, they filled it all the way up because that's how much 5 to 7 ounces fills in one of those glasses. And it's just, it's just sad. It's also one of the reasons why generally with a canned wine, I'm gonna pour it into a glass because the can, just that little opening, isn't gonna give me a chance to have the aroma or to experience the aroma. And also why I give my husband a look whenever he drinks directly from the bottle. Now, a quick note before we dive in any deeper, you'll notice that I didn't say to avoid stemless wine glasses. Many will argue that having a stem on your wine glass matters, but here's the thing. When you look into the science of it, the only thing that matters, having a stem versus not, is the temperature of your wine. What we truly care about is the shape of the bowl and the thickness of the rim of the glass. Not having a stem simply means that you have the risk of warming up the wine with your hand when you're holding it. But if it's not something where you're like walking around holding the glass of wine, if it's mainly sitting on the table, that's not really much of a concern, right? You're only grabbing it. You're only holding it when you are grabbing it to drink it, and it's not going to warm up quite that much with that little bit of time. I will say if you're walking around, a stem is probably preferred because your hand is more likely to warm up the glass, but if it's just sitting on the table, I wouldn't even worry about it. We care about the shape of the bowl and the thickness of the rim. Now, one of the first times that I truly got to experience how the shape of your glass affects the taste of the wine was actually on my very first Walla Walla retreat. And we went to the winery called Long Shadows and they have a really lovely Riesling. And rather than just pouring it for us to taste, they poured it for us in two different glasses. And so we each got two glasses. One of them was narrow, right? Pretty smaller. You might call it a Riesling glass or maybe even a white wine glass. And one of them was significantly larger. It had a, it had a wide opening and had a fairly bigger bowl. And they poured the Riesling in each one. And then they had us taste them. And what was incredible was that the shape of the wine glass did indeed affect the flavor of the wine. And it wasn't something where one was good and one was bad, right? It wasn't to show that like you should definitely use this wine glass. What we actually discovered is that everybody had different preferences and these different shapes of the wine glasses just emphasized different things about the wine. And it depended on what you were looking for in your wine and what you liked as to which glass you should use. And so this is again, kind of like one of those great examples of why I don't think You should just have a wine glass for each variety that you're drinking, because it totally depends on what you are looking for in that wine. I'll give you some kind of some guidelines at the end of this podcast to go off of, but keep in mind, a lot of this depends on your taste in wine and what you are looking for. So what this experience taught me and what my research has continued to show is that there's a simple way to think about wine glasses. Do I want my wine to either A, have more contact with air and thus release more aromatics, tame the tannins, expand on many flavors, like more diversity of flavor, and essentially be more smooth? Or B, do I want my wine to have less contact with the air and thus preserve its acidity, keep it having that like laser focus, right? Enhance the brightness. Focus the delicate floral and fruit aromas, think laser of flavor rather than expansion, right? So those are my two options. If I want more contact with air, right, and I wanna think about kind of an expansion of flavor, I'm gonna go with a bigger bowl. So, right, the, the bottom of the wine glass, when you think about like holding your hand out and holding something in it, right? That's the bowl. We want that to be bigger. And then to go a step further into this, If I want to soften the tannins and decrease the burn of alcohol, I'm going to go with a bigger bowl with a broad rim. So it's going to be more kind of straight up. It's not going to, it's not going to taper at the top. It's going to be more straight up. There's still going to be a little bit of a curved shape to it, but I'm not going for that narrow opening. However, if I want to soften the tannin, keep the acidity, but also preserve the delicate aromas, I'm gonna go for a bigger bowl. So again, we're still going for that bigger bowl at the bottom, but now we're going to taper up into a narrow opening. We wanna trap those aromas in there. So that was option A, bigger bowl, and then depending on whether we want soft tannins, decreased alcohol, or preserved delicate aromas, we'll determine on whether how big the opening is. Then option B, if I want less contact with the air, if I'm going for like laser of flavor, delicate flavors. More like preserving the acidity, I want a narrow bowl with a narrow opening. So that all said, I find the happy medium in terms of what wine glasses should I own is there are 3 types of wine glasses, basically, as I described above, those 3 different options, having those 3 different types of wine glasses basically has you set for any type of wine that you want to enjoy. So again, the first one would be a tall, broad glass, and sometimes these are called a Bordeaux glass. They have a wide bowl and a broad opening, so they don't taper at the top quite as much. They do a tiny little bit, but not as much. These work great for big, bold, high-alcohol wines. You're thinking Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec. But again, this is just a guideline. If you have a high alcohol white wine that, you know, is just really maybe like a little bitter on the tongue, or just, you just really want to expand on all the flavors that this wine is offering, put it in a Bordeaux glass. That will do the trick. It helps decrease the burn of the alcohol, helps soften the wine and expand the flavors. So the first type of glass, tall, broad glass, you may hear it called a Bordeaux glass. Today's podcast is brought to you by Last Bubbles, your online destination for incredible sparkling wine at unbelievable prices. If you know me, you know I'm a total sucker for a great bottle of bubbles. Sparkling wine should not be saved for special occasions. Instead, I think you pop bubbly to make the occasion special. Plus, it pairs with everything from oysters and caviar to popcorn on Tuesday nights. So it's honestly a no-brainer to keep a bottle chilled and ready in the fridge. Last Bottle makes that easy by featuring one handpicked sparkling wine every day, from champagne to cava to pét-nat, all at 30 to 70% off retail. Their team tastes through hundreds of bottles, so what you see each day is truly worth popping. Every offer also comes with tasting notes, pairing ideas, and stories about the farmers and winemakers behind the wine. Plus a bubbles glossary that explains things like méthode traditionnelle, PET-NAT, and dosage. They even have a brand new Last Bubbles app, making it easier than ever to discover your next favorite bottle. So go download the app or visit lastbubbles.com and use code CORCANDFIZZ for 10% off your next order. The next one, again, we're going for a large round bulb with a narrow opening. These are often called the burgundy glasses, and these are the ones that like, I swear, kind of look like they're as big as your head. I mean, you can have a Bordeaux glass that's that big too, but almost always the burgundy glasses are huge. And the reason for that is they want a large bowl at the bottom because we want the wine to be in contact with the air. It's going to help calm the alcohol, but it's also going to expand on all the flavors. But then what we want to do is trap all of those aromas that are coming off of the wine. Keep them in the wine glass so we can smell them. So that's why it tapers at the top and you get a narrow opening. So again, this is often called a burgundy glass. It works great for either delicate red wines or full-bodied white wines where we want to— again, there's lots of aromas happening. So Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Chardonnay. These are all great wines where you could start them in a burgundy glass, see what you think. And then finally, our third glass is a tall, narrow glass with a narrow bowl. So again, our bowl isn't going to be— we're not looking for something where we're going to get a lot of contact with air. We don't actually want to have a large surface area, and we're going to let it just kind of taper up. Not too much, nothing too crazy, because we already started with a smaller bowl. These are often called a Riesling glass, but they are for more than just Riesling, and you can put whatever you want in there. These work great for high acid wines. So the reason it's called a Riesling glass is because it does work well for Riesling. Also, Gewürztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc go really well in this glass. But again, if you have a wine and you want to preserve the acidity, you're kind of just going for more of a focus on flavor. Maybe you have a Gamay, right? And it's got this really delicate floral aroma that you love and you want that acidity and it doesn't have a lot of tannin to it, so you're not worried about it. You know, being overly dry feeling on the palate. You could put the Gamay in the Riesling glass, see what happens. Does that give you the flavor that you're looking for? Honestly, if you have these 3 glasses, one of the best things you can do is experiment. Which glass does the wine taste best in? Now, with all that said, if you're not wanting to chase perfection, the experiment of like, which glass do I put my wine into is just like overwhelming to you. And you're like, Haley, I don't, I don't care. You'd also be fine with a universal wine glass. You may have heard this before. Many companies are making these now. Makes it so easy to just have a go-to wine glass. One of my favorites is from the company called Glasfin. I've actually had the founder on the show. Really cool to hear from him how glass shape affects the flavor. And he kept all this in mind when he created the universal wine glass. Yes, they're a little more expensive. This is because, and especially if you get a good, like if you're going to go universal wine glass, like might as well like get something like a little fancier, right? Like this is gonna be your go-to, but trust me, you will taste the difference in these higher-end wine glasses. I know it sounds crazy. I know I sound a little bit more like a snobby wine person, and I promise no, no snobbery here. If you get the wine glasses from Target, no worries. But if you wanted to step up your game and you were curious to see what it would taste like, I highly recommend the Glassfin Universal Wine Glass would be a great place to start. Or you can start your collection and go for one of the Bordeaux, Burgundy, or Riesling glasses that I talked about earlier. The other thing I like about Glassfin is it's actually dishwasher friendly, believe it or not. It's actually safer to wash your wine glasses in the dishwasher than doing it by hand. I mean, this whole podcast could just be that, and wouldn't that be a great thing to learn? I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine Podcast. If you loved it as much as I did, You know what to do. Take a quick second, rate it, leave a review, leave a comment. Let me know what you think. And of course, share it with a wine lover in your life. And if you'd like to show additional support for the show, you can become a paid subscriber. Click the link in the show notes and become a monthly supporter for $10 or less a month. You'll get a shout out in the next episode that I record. Plus, if you choose $10 per month, you'll get to choose a topic for a future episode. In next week's episode, I'll be welcoming back a guest to the podcast for the very first time. I can't believe I've gone this long and had like a different guest every single time. If there are certain guests that you would like me to invite back again, let me know. I would love to have people come on again and talk about their stuff. But this time around, it's going to be Lisa Toupets of Toupets Wine Collection. She'll be joining me to talk German wine, but But she's not coming alone. She's brought one of the German winemakers that she works with, Max, from Weingut Greiner. Max makes wine in a small, lesser-known part of Germany called Markgräflerland, aka the Black Forest region. That's what he said I can call it because I have a really hard time with the German name. His winery is fully biodynamic, which we do discuss during the interview. So if you're curious to learn more about that, he also has a really funny story for how he got into wine. So you're going to want to listen to that. Thanks again for listening. If you want to learn more about wine, come follow me at Cork and Fizz on Instagram. Cheers!