Having done quite a number of glass comparisons, one of the significant throughlines of the tastings was how poorly the shape of glass Chez Panisse uses performs with Pinot Noir. In multiple tastings that mostly straight sided glass with no flare at the lip is usually one of the first 1-3 glasses culled out.
I may not have interpreted your post correctly but that shape would, IMO, have had little chance of maximizing his experience with that wine.
Even though I donāt fuss over glasses too much, I agree that would not be my preferred glass for pretty much any wine.
Regarding the impact of the shape of the stem on taste, different shapes deliver the wine to your mouth at different speeds. So the point the wine lands in your mouth is different depending upon the stem.
With a wide standard burgundy bowl as you tilt the wine to your mouth the wine goes down into the wide side of the bowl, and as most people donāt drink with their elbow vertical and glugging the wine, that side space contains most of the wine and a smaller amount at a slower speed is delivered to your palate. Add the flared lip of the Riedel Sommelier series or the Oregon Pinot Noir glass and it delivers the wine even further forward in the mouth and even slower.
Contrast that with straight sided Bordeaux stems, or the glass at Chez Panisse. Drinkers raising the glass, containing a similar amount of wine, to the same point get a bigger amount of wine that is moving considerably faster. It lands it a different part of your palate than with a Pinot Noir/Burg stem. And the wines are perceived very differently, in my experience.
For Pinot Noir, I would drink from a quart mason jar with a curved lip before I used a Bordeaux stem. Seriously, the wine will taste better because you get the wine in the front of your palate and have it move more slowly through your mouth. The mason jar also has more surface area (and is easy to swirl!) and will keep the aromas in the jar better than the Bordeaux glass will. Just my opinion, though I have actually used the mason jar.
Maybe Riedel should design a series of differently shaped funnels 
Great discussionā¦just one thought. There was a post suggesting that fine dining restaurants should have appropriate glassware. But I never thought of Chez Panisse as a Michelin white tablecloth fine dining restaurant. That is not what they are about in my opinion. They are more about communal dining, like get the best of the markets and interpret it with some knowledgeable chefs that serve. Jeremiah (and Iām sure other Chez Panisse chefs) occasionally did āfine diningā menus as a one off, but to me itās always been a great casual place to get good fresh food. I think maybe the Michelin recognition may have forced them into another approach, and changed dinerās expectations, but that is not their fault.
Def not before a third date. Or so Iām told.
So, Iām probably in a lower snack bracket than some of you here, but mi dis pesos
At home our regular glasses are Speigelau - āRed Wineā for Chardonnay etc, and simpler reds. Bordeaux for bigger reds, Pinot for, well Pinot. Riesling etc in the āWhite wine ā glass
And I sometimes think thatās too complicated.
Not too fussed about thinness, but I hate c,inky glasses. Balance is very important.
So hereās the odd thing. For special dinner parties we often pull out the heavy crystal that was a wedding gift, and Iām struggling to recall the make. Quite heavy, but very well balanced, thin lip, cut glass that shows of wine beautifully. Standard tulip profile. And the wines taste great. Mostly Bordeaux, RhĆ“ne, Burgundy.
Yes I need to do a blind tasting but how does one do yhst ?.
The single best wine tasting glass is a medium to large brandy stem.
You can lock the thread now.
Suspicions confirmed! How was the Luncheon Claret or was that Bourgogne?
Funny that, I sometimes use Pinot Noir for White Burg
If the lunch is long enough it may not matter.
Iāve been thinking this throughout the discussion. I wasnāt even aware Michelin rated it. I guess over time itās become so famous, such an institution, that its level is elevated in the minds of many. Fanciness and formality were essentially the antithesis of Berkeley when it opened and for many years after. I am OK with them holding to their roots even though I think they could improve on the glasses without straying into pomp.
I tried, but I canāt let this go.
It doesnāt matter what shape the glass is, the liquid is going to enter your mouth the same way from every glass. If the glass has a full pour, it doesnāt matter what the shape is below the rim, the surface will be horizontal as it goes over the rim. And if itās the last sip, youāre tilting the glass to the point where the liquid is slightly past horizontal, regardless of shape. Also, the vast majority of glasses have roughly the same diameter at the lip, regardless of the overall shape.
Shape simply doesnāt influence āwhereā the wine ends up in your mouth. And even if it did, any experienced wine drinker is holding the wine for a few seconds, swishing it around, saturating every surface.
The idea that glass shape affects how wine āenters your mouthā, and therefore how you taste it, is ridiculous.
For all of you who claim certainty about any of this:
If you have a deeper bowl (think of the glass on itās side for this), then you have to raise the glass up higher to get the last of a wine. You also have to tilt the glass further to get the first sip of a glass.
With a flatter side the wine reaches the lip of the glass earlier and has more momentum behind it.
More momentum generally places a liquid going over a lip further out then less momentum does. Anyone who has ever dumped out a bucket of water probably knows this.
As someone who has topped barrels from a wide variety of vessels, the part you get in trouble with a cup is the end when you take the vessel to flat, especially with straight sided vessels.
And as always Alan-you can hit ignore for my posts anytime. It would be great if you did.
I have no intention of ignoring you, i enjoy your posts. But this latest is just wrong. Get some different glassware out, fill them to different levels, tilt them to the point where the liquid flows over the rim, and youāll see the shape under the rim makes no difference at all. Itās like comparing dams on lakes - the depth and shape of the lake makes no difference in how water flows over the dam.
Except that a flat sided glass isnāt really a lake.
You can take it up with Georg Riedel if you like, heās the person that explained it to me.
And hopefully we can at least agree that the flated lip on the sommelier bowl and the Oregon Pinot glass would drop the wine onto your palate earlier, but perhaps not.
Dude, give it a rest. Take a moment of self-reflection. Politely tell him you disagree. But donāt tell him he is āwrong.ā
Alan appears to be invested in the experimental observation, which is not how wine is actually consumed from the glass. I can go back to my junior and senior year fluid dynamics notes, but I really donāt want to.