Glass tasting

 Last Friday, I attended a Glass Tasting and it was great!  Yes, I said Glass Tasting.   There was wine involved, and when I went I committed, it was advertised as a "Wine Tasting / Wine Class", but once it got underway I quickly discovered that this was much more than just some ordinary wine tasting event.  This would turn out to be AWESOME!

Erin's father, Buzz, is in the "gourmet accessories" trade, and is amongst many other fun things, the Riedel Wine glass representative for the surrounding states.   I'm struggling with how to get this going so I'll just jump in the deep end.

We had 5 glasses in front of us on a place mat along with a few grapes a piece of brie and a couple piece of chocolate.  4 glasses had wine in them (Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Burgundy, and a Bordeaux) and one empty glass to the left we called the "joker".  (Not joker as in making a mockery of the glass, but joker as in the wildcard in poker.  However, this soon become a mockery of said Joker.)  That 'joker' glass could have been any glass; and there were many versions of it around the room.  In my case, the glass pretty much resembled any red wine glass you'll find in an average restaurant.  We all have them at home too, at least I know I do. (so embarrassing now)  But anyway, you know the glass I'm talking about, a standard red wine glass with a rounded edge.  Sturdy, dish washer safe, and unbeknown to me, the worst glasses EVER!

Don't worry I won't give you the entire play by play, instead just some interesting highlights.   So each of the Riedel glasses was for a different type of wine.  As in any/most wine tasting class you've been to, they were 4 different wines.  But this is where things got fun.  Much more fun.

Glasses from left to right : Sauvignon Blanc, Burgundy, Chardonnay, Bordeaux.

Buzz provided great background on the history of the glasses, but also how the human senses play a role in food and drink, and where on our tongues we taste different things, and therefore where on the tongue it makes sense to taste different wines.  He also explained that the lip on a glass is instrumental on how a wine will taste as the lip and the shape of the glass delivers the wine (and it's flavor) to a different part (and correct) part of the tongue.  The joker glass with it's rounded lip was terrible and it was great to have it there since we spent the evening moving the wines from glass to glass, give us the ability to truly taste the difference of the SAME WINE in a different delivery instrument! It was amazing how different the SAME wine not only tasted, but SMELLED so different in each glass!

It was obvious very quickly that I have wasted my money on countless bottles and glasses of wine (home and restaurants) by drinking them in an "ordinary glass".  Some of these wines we drank were great but literally smelled like dust and mold when in the joker glass.  Heck, one of the reds smelled like dust in one of the other Riedel glasses too, that's how crazy all this was!


But not only that... the different wines tasted dramatically different in each of the different Riedel glasses too.  Even by simply switching a white (Sauvignon Blanc) into a  different white (Chardonnay) glass, the difference was staggering,  same goes for the red wines!


Not that this event wasn't just great through and through, but the most interesting part of the night for me was the fact that white wine glasses should not look like your typical white wine glass anymore.  In fact, scroll back up to the from the photo above... you would think that the glass on the left was for white, and the rest are for some type of red.  This would be the the most interesting part for me... 

Above are two of the glasses, on the left is the Burgundy glass.   Look carefully at the bubble (or belly) of both glasses.  These are actually IDENTICAL glasses, except Riedel found in rigorous and far reaching taste tests (with sommeliers and the actual wine makers themselves), that a Chardonnay actually tasted best (the way the wine makers wanted it to) in this same Burgundy shaped glass belly when the top of the glass was chopped off, to allow the aromas to move differently within the glass, and also the way the Chardonnay is delivered to your tongue.  Fascinating stuff!

Being the biggest wine fan I have evert met, I kept thinking that my dad would have probably fallen off his chair had he been there!  I can't begin to count the number of evenings we spent having dinner with a red wine, then sitting there for another hour just talking, finishing off that bottle of wine.  Nice wines too!  Heck, he had some old Chateau Lafite's from the 60's that we drank on very special occasions out of Joker glasses.  Makes me almost cry thinking what we and most importantly he could have experienced, instead of the (still great, yet) very limited range we got to taste.

So now, I'm am the proud oner of two sets of these 4 glasses, and they can easily be transported in the box they came in, so let me know if you're coming over... or... if I should coming over to uncork a bottle with you.  My schedule's pretty tight, but I'm sure I can move things around.