The wine club gets scientific

Once a month a couple of wine enthusiasts meet in the cellar of a restaurant which is probably better known for its wine-cellar than the food that is served there (although it was rather favourably reviewed in the Gault Millau 2005). The owner is an acknowledge wine expert, who has written a couple of books about wine and has had the odd tv appearance.

Usually we discuss a vine variety or a producing region. This, of course, requires us to taste several different wines. And like experts we tilt the glass to check the colour, swivel the glass to smell the aroma, take a sip to taste the flavours and ... spit it out? Well, sometimes.

Yesterday however the subject matter was mildly off topic and somewhat scientific. The shape, size and color of a wine glass can affect your perception of the wine that's contained in it. We wanted to find out, just how much of a difference the glass can make. This is an interesting point, since lately you could get the impression that glasses need to have a unique size and shape for almost every wine variation or even vintage. This is clearly exaggerated, but where do you draw the line? After intensive testing we unsurprisingly concluded that the right glass does not turn plonk into choice wine. But it can influence your overall appraisal of the wine you are drinking.

Our experiment consisted of five different glasses: an ordinary water glass, the INAO glass, two different “white wine” glasses and two different “red wine” glasses. We tried four different wines; each one was poured into all of the glasses we tested (one at a time, of course). The result was astonishing. I expected the glass to have some effect, but was amazed to see just how much of a difference it can make!

The smell of a wine depends on the ratio of surface area and volume and hence strongly on the shape of the glass. Depending on how large the surface area of the wine in the glass is and thus how much of it is exposed to oxygen, different aromas and flavours can be more prominent.

The taste of the wine is determined by the way the wine flows onto the tongue and parts of the palate. This in turn depends largely on the rim of the glass. So wine can taste either sweeter (the taste buds for sweet are at the tip of the tongue) or more sour (taste buds in the middle and at the sides of the tongue) depending on which part is flooded first or most.

There are no “official” sizes or shapes of wine glasses you have to use to serve it the "proper" way. How many different glasses you actually "need", depends on your individual taste. If you do not want to be the next Robert Parker or Hugh Johnson, there is an all-purpose glass you can use for all wines. This used to be the INAO glass:

But nowadays sommeliers and other professionas use the "Chianti" glass made by Riedel:

If you are more of wine enthusiast, you probably want to have at least different glasses for white and red wine. Traditionally wine glasses with larger, broader bowls are used for bold red wines with bigger bouquets, and narrower wine glasses are used to concentrate the more delicate aromas of lighter white wines. (Yes, I "stole" this last sentence from someone else on the internet.)

If you speak German and are interested to read more about this, check out Thomas Vilgis' article “Turbulenzen hinter dem Glasrand”, published in “Häuptling eigener Herd”, issue 25. It’s both informative and entertaining.

“Häuptling kleiner Herd”, which translates into "Chief Little Stove”, is an interesting publication in general. It calls itself the only "culinary combat organ with jacket text" (it's a quarterly). You can get it from Buch Gourmet or go directly to the bookshop of the same name, if you live in Cologne. They claim to be the oldest bookshop that also sells second-hand books and is dedicated exclusively to cookbooks.