I saw you comment a couple of times about detergent smells interfering. Were all glasses washed in the same method? Was this a blind tasting?
Not to be quarrelsome, but what does it mean for a wine glass to blow another wine glass out of the water? Beauty? Overall look and feel? Or is this about how a glass makes the wine taste? And to put my skepticism out in the open, is there really consensus around here that one wine glass can consistently provide objectively superior flavors and aromas to another wine glass? If so, what does that even mean for a given wine?
I often get caught up in the impulse to establish a hierarchy for everything in this hobby, but it gets to be too much sometimes.
I picked up one machine and one mouth-blown GG, and am now regretting it. I would have been perfectly content with the machine made if I hadn’t held it side-by-side with the mouth-blown, but it seems ungainly by comparison.
I haven’t done any comparisons with other stems yet, but I’m very happy with how wines are showing in the GG.
Great question - here’s my thinking, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and personal philosophy.
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It’s clear to me that glasses have an effect on the aromas of wine. Have you ever smelled someone else’s glass of the same wine? Even identical glasses, identical wines - because of small differences in wine quantity, amount of swirling, hand temperature, perfume, etc., they will often smell different. I’m not convinced they effect the perception on the palate (except that thin rims feel way better than thick rims).
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Aesthetics are nice, and add to the overall experience, but they aren’t a major priority for me - for example, I like plain glass jugs for decanting. They’re easy to clean and get the job done.
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More complexity is better. I like knowing things about the wine, like whether it has a low level of brett or pyrazines. For me it adds to the experience and connects the story of the wine’s production to what’s in the glass.
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More Objectivity is better. As a data scientist I like controlled experiments, so given a choice I would prefer to use one glass for everything (I prefer whites at room temperature as well for this reason). If I perceive a difference, I want to know that it’s the wine speaking, not the glass. I try to take my own glass to tastings and offlines for this reason.
For all these reasons I decided to try a few glasses and then commit to one - I don’t feel that GG is way better than other glasses in the grand scheme of things, but I did feel it was a little better than the Zaltos, and way cheaper, so it seemed like a good choice.
Rajiv, most of your criteria make a lot of sense. We probably care more about aesthetics than you do; 95% of the wine we drink is with dinner, and more and more often with guests in our home. If we were mostly attending tastings and offlines, our priorities would be different.
I also agree that glasses have an effect on aroma. Pretty indisputable, actually. The question is whether the effect is positive, negative, or just “different.” I strongly suspect the last. Other than agreeing that the “balloon” shape tends to amplify aroma – which is generally a good thing for good, not-overly-alcoholic wine – I struggle with the concept that the shape of one wine glass can be objectively superior to another shape for all wines.
Relatedly, I disagree with the concept that “complexity” is a linear scale from least to most. For that reason, your point about complexity is also one that I question. I strongly doubt that a single glass can, by its design, amplify or reveal “more” complexity across the spectrum of wines. My own suspicion is that (at least for the category of wine glasses we’re talking about, which are all “good” wine glasses) different wine glasses make different wines taste different, that sometimes one will taste more “complex” than another, but that more often different glasses just change the perceived balance of the various components in fairly unpredictable ways, and that no single glass will make all (or even most) wines smell more complex than another glass such that it is possible to select an objectively superior wine glass based on complexity.
I’m with you on objectivity though. And that even goes for our wine with dinner, where wine is not the focus. I think it’s a good idea to pick 1 or 2 glasses (in our case, Zalto Universal and Burgundy are versatile enough to cover just about everything between them), buy a enough of them every place setting at your table, and then stick with them. Trying to match glasses to specific wines or having a random assortment of different glasses is just adding unnecessary variables and distracts from the wine itself.