Crystal Stemware Review Video Transcript
Written By: Anonymous on Mon, Dec 4th 2006
Brian Freedman: Welcome to the Classic Wines Minute brought to you by ClassicWines.com; I am your host Brian Freedman, and today we're here at the Wine Room in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and we have a wine education episode. Today we'll be talking about stemware. This is a big issue in the wine world these days, because you can walk into wine shop and there were approximately three-and-a-half million different kinds of stems there to choose from; and they range from tulip shaped ones like these all the way up to hand-blown ones that will run you like $90. And the question is, "What makes one glass superior to another?" Today we have two glasses that I believe, represent the far ends of the quality spectrum.
On the right here, we have a traditional tulip-shaped glass; it's made of glass, it angles out, but it really doesn't angle back in. What I don't like about these kinds of glasses is that when you got to swirl, first of all, the major issue is, you see, it starts riding up the sides of the glass, and you risk it spilling out, which is not good. I mean, if you don't like the people sitting next to you, by all means, spill, I highly recommend it. The other downside is, all of these aromas are flying off into the air; you need something that's actually going to capture them more. A glass like this -- and this glass is actually by Taste of Purple. It's called the Vino2, its crystal, clearly it's oversized.
Now, oversized is very, very important here because it allows us to really swirl and aerate the wine and it allows the -- because of the shape of this, the top is actually coming in, the lip is coming in, it will allow those aromas to be collected in there. What I really like about this one though is this dimple here. What the dimple does, and you will see here when I go to swirl, this dimple actually helps to really aerate the wine even more. It agitates it, it creates more surface area of the wine that comes into contact with the oxygen; so, when I am swirling here, and I hope you can see this, it really is getting much more agitated in there than just swirling with the other glass. The more oxygen we can bring into the wine, the more it will open up, the more the aromas will be released, and the better it will taste, because the majority of what we taste is actually what we smell.
Now, the wine we are tasting today is actually a very high end wine; this is the Luna Vineyards 2003 "Canto" Napa Valley, and this is an interesting blend; this is Cab Franc, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petite Sirah. So it's really all over the place. So let's actually see here how these glasses change the wine.
The wine in the Taste of Purple glass is more rounded, there's more of a base note character on the nose, and yet there's something almost more fresh or balanced on the palate. This one is fine; there's nothing wrong with it but there's nothing particularly right with it. The Vino2, oversized crystal glasses, it makes all the difference in the world. Also, the key for me here, this dimple really does help to aerate it.
So, thanks to the folks at Taste of Purple, thanks to the folks at the Wine Room in Cherry Hill, and thanks to my producers for letting me get a bottle like this - because this is a real treat, especially when you have the right glass to drink it from.
For all of us here at ClassicWines.com, I am your host Brian Freedman. Cheers.
