more than a few years back, when i crewed on a 45' sailboat, the owner would open a bottle or two of tattinger blanc de blanc. he had no glasses or cups on the boat. i drank the stuff out of the resident dog's bowl. was better than the water from the tanks. much better. the bowl was stemless.

I'm pretty sure the shape of the glass makes the wine taste better by the same degree that a paper vs. styrofoam plate makes a burger taste better.

Even more so. A LOT more so. The fact is, well over half of the flavor sensation of fine wine is in the bouquet (a.k.a the nose, the aromas). And there is all sorts of objective analysis that the size and shape of the glass makes a massive difference in terms of how much those aromas are concentrated so that the taster's olfactory sense gets them.

The type of plate you rest your burger on does not have such an effect, because when you eat your burger, it is no longer on your plate. When you drink your wine, you are drinking it directly from the glass, and usually, your nose is either inside of, or directly above the rim of the glass. The glass matters a lot in terms of capturing and concentrating the nose of the wine.

I'm a nut for the "Right glass for the right wine". But then, the wine I could afford and bought in the halcyon days of youth and yore was better than "jelly glass" but not up to stemware.

a jelly glass that has a mason jar shape provides pretty much the same features, excepting the glass is thicker.

Well, that's what people who sell glasses would like us to believe, at least.

Actually, that's not from folks who sell glasses. It's from folks who produce fine wines, and want them appreciated. It's certainly been established in both single and double blind tastings at a highly statistically significant level that the size of the glassware and the degree to which the bowl concentrates the nose makes a substantial difference in taste perception of wines.

Even folks who have very little experience discerning differences among fine wines have been shown to prefer wines from large glasses tasted blind, where the bowl is shaped to concentrate the nose.

So we need a big glass with a small opening? I look forward to reading the research.

There's a lot of B.S. out there about wine glasses, but in actual fact, any good quality glasses that are in the 16 Oz or larger range, and which have a rim that is smaller than the widest part of the bowl by at least 25% (33% might even be better) will do the job. You can pick up good quality glasses that meet this need for pretty cheap - like $4-6 per glass if you shop around and don't get hung up with brand names.

Professional tasters use a standard glass called an INAO glass when evaluating wines critically. IMHO, they are too small for optimum drinking enjoyment, but the proportions of their shape is ideal. Attached is the specs for an INAO glass. For me, the best glasses to buy are those that are shaped essentially the same as INAO glasses, but are more like 20-24 oz in size - essentially triple the volume of a standard INAO glass. You can find them pretty cheaply all over if you look around for them.

http://www.edsoon.com/the-inao-glass...-the-industry/

we have picked up about 100. most are in matched sets of 2 or 3 or 4. do have 6 matched riedel stemless. buy at marshalls, or tuesday morning. bought a number of beautiful rosenthal goblets at tues am, for a buck a glass. do prefer the correct champagne glass for "chompers" as all the literati call it(also known as bubbly burg).

I have participated in several wine tastings where we have also tried the effect of the glass on the wine. There is a clear difference.

Why, that must be the reason that in my youth wine tasted so good in those old bulbous, thick-walled (flutes around the base) glasses stolen from hotel bathrooms. It was the "globe" to contain the bouquet! Obviously, the glass had originally been designed for confrontive, combative wine-tastings to reduce breakage and critics cut by shards from shattered delicate glassware.

The above post is perhaps the best Ive read on FT for a very, very long time.... ^ ^ ^

Pure vinum marketing.

Which alas, my wife and I fell for 15 years ago. The stemless when it first appeared does warm the glass like Cognac, so use a proper glass and just aerate your better wines if you want the full bouquet. There is much better fine Austrian glassware to be found elsewhere.

All our Reidel is now either broken or donated away. Good riddance.

OK, now THIS made me laugh!