Wine Stemware

What type of stemware do you use, and does it matter?

We here at the Witherspoon house have a mixture of Spiegelau and Riedel glasses for red and Spiegelau only for the whites. The red are the Bordeaux model and except for the actual stem of the glass you couldn’t tell the difference between the two visually. (Except for the etched logo on the bottom) I know internally, the companies use different crystal weights and mixture percentages that they both define as being the best.

Recently we have become more and more amazed with nice restaurants that use small goblet shaped wine glasses, especially for red wines. A friend asked me the other day if I would consider myself a wine snob and I said no just an enthusiast, but when it comes to stemware I would say yes. The stemware can really change the wine experience for me both at a restaurant and at a tasting room. I don’t care about brand names, but when a tasting room/restaurant has nice, “properly sized” stemware I think it makes a difference in my overall experience not to say necessarily on the taste of the wine.

Scientific studies have been done examining this very concept and found that when you take away the visual and tactile stimuli, negligible difference is found between the typical goblet style and the “proper” Bordeaux style Riedel glass. When you leave in the aforementioned stimuli there are significant differences between the glass types.

Okay, Wine Bloggers, let me know what YOU think!!