Anyone else have a problem with sulfury/eggy smelling wine glasses at restaurants that have soft or runny egg-based dishes or restaurants that had a brunch service that morning? My wife and I may have become hyper-sensitive to it, but we perceive it to be a huge problem. This is not limited to low-end establishments; we’ve been to a number of 1-star Michelins where we’ve experienced it – most recently Goosefoot in Chicago which is a BYOB and so it was particularly disappointing as we brought some special bottles. Some places seem to avoid the problem – separate washing machine for glassware? Tonight it happened again at a restaurant in Houston, Caracol, which has a fantastic wine list that obviously had a lot of thought put into it – it seemed so incongruous that they would overlook this.
How do you guys deal with this? Asking for a new glass never works, as they all smell like eggs. If you ask them to hand wash the glasses, they inevitably come back smelling like soap.
It’s gotten to the point where we are shying away from restaurants that have an egg dish on their dinner menu or that do brunch.
On a separate, but related, topic, I find myself ordering egg, foie gras, and uni-containing dishes much less frequently for the stinky, sulfury smell they give wine glasses when you sip after taking a bite. Same smell, but caused by me rather than being a preexisting condition.
Are we the only ones with these issues? Couldn’t find anything a a search of the forum.
I’ve noticed it - nothing at all to do with eggs but a lot of restaurant glasses have a dusty smell and sometimes other smells from cleaners and food and worst of all, a sour smelling towel or cloth. Usually a rinse with water is sufficient, or sometimes a rinse with wine if you can get them to do that.
I’ve never noticed an egg/sulfur smell, but musty cloth and detergent smells are way too common, even at a lot of fine dining places. I wine rinse when possible, but usually that’s not an option because I don’t realize there’s a problem before I have wine in my glass.
Well then at that point if the pour is ruined do you drink it or use that wine as a rinse?
Edit: this question was asked assuming you’ve brought your own wine. If you ordered BTG I can see it being more of an issue. If I bought a bottle off their list at full markup I’d expect them to find a solution.
Happens way too often - and the challenge is to be able to smell the glass before wine is put into it. This is never possible with wines poured BTG, and I have had, on more than one occasion, a wine that seemed ‘tainted’ by a dirty glass.
Happens in tasting rooms from time to time, and at larger events where glass rentals are used.
Folks think I’m crazy to smell empty glasses, but I want to make sure that I’m smelling once wine goes in is the wine and not something else . . .
I’ve never noticed an eggy smell, but I agree on the towel comments. I’d much rather drink out of a glass that has a few water spots on it than a glass that smells like a dank towel. I can see why restaurants want their glasses to look pristine, but to ruin the first glass of wine is a shame. I think I’ve only been to less than 5 restaurants ever that “prime” the glasses with a bit of wine before the real pouring starts. I’ve admired that when I’ve seen it.
I’m more prone to notice detergent or chemical odors than others mentioned. Carrie is very sensitive and regularly sends her glasses back at restaurants. As a former restaurant manager, she will occasionally pull restaurant managers or Somms aside and have them smell the glass too so they will know the problem exists.
We run all stems through the dishwasher twice, (we have the time to) and use micro fiber towels to polish them as they come out of the dishwasher. The “glass only” towel, if properly hung to dry, will last about a week. Carrie won’t even try to wash them. They are either thrown away or get a short extra life cleaning the hard wood floors.
I have a HUGE issue with egg yolk residue on plates and in the sink…then washing a wine glass…it TOTALLY smells like TCA! My wife loves to eat eggs for breakfast pretty much every morning…and if you wash anything in the same sink…it will smell musty/eggy/corky. I don’t know what the reactions is with the egg yolk…stainless steel??? But I make sure to keep our wine glasses far far away from eggs!
Now…as for restaurants…I’ve never associated the egg thing with them…but have had MANY a time smelled the glass and it was musty/wet dog and totally reeked of tca! Like when you wipe out a glass with a damp towel…you get that stinky mustiness…which KILLS the wine instantly. Our local fav rest is guilty of this…and I have to keep telling them to smell EVERY glass before they set the table…they had a huge issue with their own distilled bottle water that when poured it smelled fine for a few minutes…then began to smell like a fish tank! It was horrible…they later found out it was the tank they were keeping the water in. Just blows me away to think they can’t smell these things, and figure it out for themselves?? How many non wine geek customers have these stinky glasses…and drink their wine in them, and come away not liking that wine at all? Crazy!
Never noticed any kind of egg smell but probably will now so thanks a lot you fargin’ bastes!
Musty towel and improperly rinsed dish soap are a noticeable but luckily infrequent problem though. Nothing like seeing a bartender use his zamboni towel to wipe dry glasses too.
This is a big problem for me too, I can barely get that yolky smell off plates and especially silverware and keep a separate scrubber for dealing with it.
Seems the popular opinion is that funky smells are due to dirty towels rather than eggs. I will say that the smell is much more common at restaurants that have a runny egg on the menu, but that may just be confirmation bias. Though if you’ve ever sipped a wine after having an egg dish, then gone back to that glass, it’s an identical smell. Like I said, I also get a similar effect from foie. I’ll keep the towel thing in mind though, next time it happens.
BYOS is probably the safest bet, but it’s one thing to do that at an inexpensive BYOB with shitty wine glasses and another to do that at a fine dining establishment. Although we probably come across as pretentious pricks wherever we dine anyway, so might as well own it!
Actually, most ‘funky smells’ in the glass probably come from the different sanitizers/cleansers used in the dishwasher, rather than the polish cloth. Unless they’re using cloths for drying all sorts of dishes, which I’m guessing/hoping they’re not.
Glasses should have dedicated polish cloths.
We use Riedel polish cloths, and only once per rack.
A lot of restaurants/bars (including mine) use an Autochlor dishwashing system, which requires using a proprietary sanitizing solution that is tested by the Health Dept every inspection. Unfortunately, one of the results can be a funky smell that takes a while to blow off. I’ve noticed it to be more musty than eggy, but I imagine other sanitizers give off different odors.
It’s most noticeable in glasses with a decent sized bowl but smaller mouth; they tend to concentrate aromas, and are particularly unforgiving to faults/bad smells. Even when completely odorless themselves, they can expose flaws in an otherwise sound wine.
A quick rinse with wine to true the glass should work.
Glass funk is FAR too common - I always, ALWAYS smell the empty glass before pouring wine in, as I can tell if the ‘funk’ is glass funk or wine funk, and if the former, I’ll make them get me another glass, pour the wine in it, and deal with the slightly affected wine, but when every sniff I take of the wine has the glass funk in it, doesn’t matter how good or bad the wine is, I hate it.
Same here for me. We have just started bringing stems places if were bringing any good wine with us to pay corkage on. Nothing worse than brining a great bottle of PN and having to drink it from a very basic or universal glass.
I learned from Jim Clendenen [ABC] a long time ago [1996], to nose the stemware before even ordering wine or opening my own bring. He got detergent immediately in every glass on the table and sent them back for a hot water only rinse and dried with a fresh cloth towel. When they came back, there was no evidence of funk and all was good. Ive not failed to check any since that moment even in 3 star Michelin restaurants. Ive found way too many inferior stems in places I would not have expected.
I`m very geeky about this issue and when I can, I usually take my own stemware to restaurants that either do not have any attention for funk free stemware of appropriate glasses in the first place.
Even at home I smell the glass and decanter before I pour.
The staff at our golf club routinely bring my wife 4 or 5 glasses to sniff, usually she finds one or two that don’t smell of sanitizer. It’s hard to explain to the waiters, but they indulge us. We tip in cash which they love.
Without a doubt stinky glasses HUGE issue - luckily most restaurants here in Bay Area take it seriously. The problem with nosing a glass is that much of what is lurking their won’t be revealed until wine is poured into the glass to “volatize” the aromas lining the glass…even at home I rinse the glass out first with wine.