Applegater., November 01, 2016, Page 17, Image 17

Applegater Winter 2016
17
GRAPE TALK
Wineglasses make
a difference
BY DEBBIE TOLLEFSON
The holiday season is just around
the corner, and I always love entertaining
when the house is decorated and so
festive. My holiday parties always include
wine. What to serve the wine in always
presents a dilemma depending on the
size of the gathering. I may or may not
have sufficient wineglasses to serve all my
nice local wines. I try to serve wines in
stemware, but often wonder if a plastic
cup from Costco would really destroy the
taste of a good wine and do I really need
both red and white wineglasses along
with champagne flutes?
The subject of glassware and
its effect on wine was the main topic of a
class I attended in August at the Oregon
Wine Experience Wine University at
Bigham Knoll in Jacksonville. The
premise that every wine has a perfect
glass seemed like a marketing ploy, but
I was open to the discussion.
The class was put on by Riedel, a
tenth-generation glass company based
in Austria. Riedel (pronounced ree-dle;
rhymes with needle) has worked for
decades to create engineered glassware
that optimizes the taste of each particular
wine. Georg Riedel first brought his
glassware to North America in the 1970s
in response to requests by Napa Valley
wine makers.
At the beginning of the class,
participants tasted water in a plastic
cup and then in a white wineglass. This
process continued with a variety of wines
and their appropriate style stemware
from Riedel’s Veritas collection. The
instructor talked in terms of glassware
being physics, wine being chemistry, and
their interaction being science.
After tasting a number of
wines from plastic cups and from
glasses correctly and not correctly
engineered, I was somewhat amazed
by the differences in aroma and taste.
The final class experiment was to taste
Coca-Cola in a plastic cup and then in a
glass developed by Riedel especially for
Coca-Cola. In the Riedel glass, I picked
up notes of orange and vanilla aromas
that I had never experienced before from
Quady North sells these logo wineglasses
for $6 each at their tasting room
at 255 E. California Street, Jacksonville.
Special holiday wineglasses are
available at Troon Vineyards,
1475 Kubli Road, Grants Pass.
one of my “guilty pleasures.” To me it
seemed like the size of the opening and
the size of the bowl made a big difference
in the “nose” of Coca-Cola and the
different wines by concentrating aromas
for maximum impact.
A study done in Tokyo, Japan,
found that changes in the amount of
ethanol vaporizing from a glass and the
vapor pattern of the ethanol interfered
with the fruitier notes of the wine when
sampled from an open cocktail glass or
a straight glass. A camera recorded less
vaporization of ethanol from a wineglass
with a smaller opening than that of the
bowl. In a wineglass, “The ring-shaped
[vapor] pattern allows drinkers to
appreciate the wine without the smell of
ethanol—which is likened to the smell
of vodka—interfering.”
The shape of the glass also
determines where the wine hits your
palette, and the architecture of the glass
controls the air flow around the wine.
The architecture of a champagne flute,
for example, helps hold the bubbles in
the flute glass, which is now used much
more often than the open champagne
glass, which allows the bubbles to
dissipate quickly.
Stemless glasses came into vogue
a decade ago, but many wine purists
believe they are a terrible idea. The lack
of a stem to keep the hand from heating
up the wine and the difficulty in swirling
the wine in a glass
with no stem are
the major reasons
many wine
Debbie Tollefson
aficionados don’t
drink from a stemless glass.
Wineglasses are a great holiday
gift for any wine aficionado, whether
it be a well-engineered glass or a piece
of beautiful artist-created, handblown
or decorated stemware. I love to create
baskets with a nice bottle of local wine
and some pretty glasses as last-minute
holiday gifts.
Put wineglasses on your holiday gift
list for your wine-loving friends. Some
wineries in the valley have wineglasses
available for purchase (see below).
A special wineglass doesn’t make a
bad wine good, but it certainly enhances
the tasting experience and may make a
good wine better.
Debbie Tollefson
debbie.avrealty@gmail.com
Where to find wineglasses
• Goodwill locations in Jackson and
Josephine County
• HomeGoods, 271 Rossanley
Drive, Medford
• Quady North, $6 each
• Troon, $24.95 each or two for
$40
• Wild Wines, 4550 Little Applegate
Road, Jacksonville, $3 each
Examples of wineglasses by Riedel: red wine (left) and white wine (right).
More information about Riedel glasses
can be found online at riedel.com.
Pl ease su ppo r t o u r ad ver tiser s—s hop loc a l!