Wine glasses-which ones do I use???

[keri]

Hi,
I am trying to figure out what wine glass to use when I serve red and white wine. I have my wedding stemware (a "wine" glass and a "goblet")which I would like to use, but I don't know if the wine glass should be used for both red and white or if the goblet should be used (or if I need something else!).

Also, I'm not exactly sure why red and whites should be served in different glasses and would love some info on that!

Thank you!!

[Innkeeper]

Keri, go to a page like this: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/glassware.asp and see if anything there looks like yours. At any rate you can see what glasses go with which wines.

To be perfectly honast, although we have a fairly good range of wine glasses, we more often than not just pick one that will fit into the top of the dishwasher and not get ruined by it. For special bottles of wine, we will go for the most appropriate glasses we have, but by no means do we have the whole enchilada.

[joeyz6]

I guess I feel more strongly about wine-glass choice. For me, the aroma of a wine is a large part of the experience, and many less-than-stellar wine glasses are shaped in a way that allows the aromas to escape much too easily.

Keri, generally white wines are served in glasses with smaller bowls and longer stems. This allows you to hold the stem rather than the bowl so that your hand doesn't heat up the wine, which usually is chilled. Red wine is generally served in a shorter glass with a larger bowl. You still want to hold the glass by the stem to avoid unsightly smudges and fingerprints on the bowl, but after a couple of glasses who notices that kind of thing anyway ... [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img] I've always assumed that the larger bowl size for red wines is intended to give more surface area to the wine. That will allow the wine to "open up" and present all of its flavors and smells. Most white wines don't need that extra space, although some great ones from places like Burgundy do, and are often served in larger glasses.

To preserve the aromas, the sides of a glass' bowl should have a good curvature so that the opening is rather small compared to the widest point of the glass.

So you have regular wine glasses and goblets. I guess it would make some sense to serve the red wine in the goblets, assuming that they're bigger, and the white wine in the glasses. But I think it would probably be fine to serve both in the wine glass, as well, especially if the goblet bowl doesn't have a good curvature.