One thing I always heard was that leaving the glasses in the dishwasher after it’s done (e.g., you run it when you go to bed and don’t open it until the morning) can lead to discoloration, depending on the materials in the glass/crystal. And I did observe this years ago in some Riedels.
My solution used to be to run it on delay so it finished right at wake-up time and then promptly open the door, but the Miele now takes care of that by automatically cracking the door and venting the steam at the end of the cycle.
Otherwise, I can’t think of anything that would be bad for the glasses as long as they are not jostling around unsecured during the cycle.
For all the reasons Noah mentioned. He’s not wrong, just dated - old dishwashers sucked pretty bad for a long time. So if you have an old, cheap, dirty dishwasher and use the cheapest scented detergent, probably not a good idea. But a newish, high quality dishwasher that rinses properly and is regularly cleaned and you only use good, non-scented detergent, the stems will come out flawless with zero effort.
In my case it was because your recommended cleaning method of just a hot water rinse and polish resulted in red wine residue build up after daily use for several months. The stems looked clean each time I rinsed them, but a small film was being left. Couldn’t find anything to get rid of it, so I tried lye and citric acid, which was recommended by someone who runs a professional tasting room. Worked like a charm to bring the stems and decanters back to new. Naturally you do need to wear gloves and be careful. But now that I use my new dishwasher, I find it unnecessary.
“Best Option” in the sense simply that it’s the best option for me.
Regarding the dishwasher- I realize lots of people prefer it. Most of the detergents in the supermarket have some sort of scent, and I have yet to find one that has no odor at all. If you have a brand to recommend, please let us all know.
When you say “safer”, I assumer you mean in terms of breakage. Personally, I’ve had more glasses break in the dishwasher than washing by hand. Maybe it’s because I’m usually just washing a couple glasses at a time so I’m not doing dedicated wine glass washes. Also, maybe I just suck at loading the dishwasher, which is possible- I have more than a few contributions to Alfert’s breakage thread.
We clean a lot of glass that gets left with varying amounts of wine residue for hours to days and so have a similar (or worse) situation to what you’re describing - hot water doesn’t cut it. Also, in a professional setting, if you have access to it, it is much faster to do a final rinse with deionised or distilled water than to fuss with polishing cloths. At the highest-throughput place I worked, we just had our Miele plumbed with deionised water so that the final rinse used that, and the glasses came out perfect. In less well-resourced settings, it’s easy enough to do manually.
I’ve had great success with the Urnex Urn and Brewer cleaner. I use it when the stains get too noticeable, maybe every 3 months or so, and the glasses (and decanters) come out sparkling.
Miele dishwasher here as well (also oven, both of which outclass our meager kitchen by a large margin lol). The racks are great for glassware, and I suspect that if I needed to wash a bunch of glasses I could remove the top silverware tray to make plenty of room height-wise in the middle rack. We use the Miele Ultra tablets that have a built in rinse agent. Glassware comes out spotless every time.
For a decanter that’s plagued by tough to remove residue, I find a Polident tablet and hot water for 30-60 minutes wonders. Needs lots of rinsing after to remove all the minty freshness.
There is a weird odor I get from time to time in a stem just handed to me that I’ve only been able to correlate with that glassware being put through a dishwasher. Especially because I’ve never smelled it at home and I never put stemware in there.
Rinsing is ok but there is a build up that will continue to happen over time. Certainly if you have hard water but the wine definitely leaves something. They definitely need more attention with something that will pull that out usually with the aid of some liquid dish soap after a few uses. At least this is the pattern I’ve fallen into.
For build up or to clean a decanter, I use PBW. You can find it on Amazon, as well as any homebrew or home winemaking supply store. Simple, odorless, effective, and inexpensive. I keep a bottle of some made up under the sink. It just takes a little to coat the surface.
