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Missouri wines can benefit from glasses designed for European varietals
• by By Glenn Bardgett • Photo courtesy of Glenn Bardgett
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Wine-lovers are often seen swirling and sniffing and holding their glasses up to the light as if looking for some magical insight into the wine’s character. But all of this presumes something even more fundamental: that the wine in question was poured into the proper glass, the size and shape of which makes a difference in the taste and aroma of the wine.
The choice of glassware may seem insignificant, but it truly does make a difference. About 10 years ago, my world of judging wine was rocked when I attended my first seminar on glassware made by Riedel, the 250-year-old Austrian company. (The name rhymes with “needle” – it’s not pronounced “RYE-dell,” which always makes me think of the high school in “Grease.”)
Attendees were led through a series of glass gymnastics, where they tasted first the wrong wine and then the correct wine for which each shape is designed. I was certain that somehow there was group hypnosis involved because the difference was truly staggering.
After attending a half-dozen such seminars over the last decade, I decided to give the experience a Missouri twist. I thought that maybe somewhere in the family of glass shapes I would find styles that would raise the appreciation of Missouri’s unique wine varieties. At this year’s Midwest Grape and Wine Conference in February at the Lake of the Ozarks, I conducted a workshop to discover how the Riedel glasses, designed for vinifera (European grape varieties), would work with our grapes. It was not my intent to sell glassware but to find another tool for enjoyment of our varieties.
I chose five basic glasses from the Vinum and Sommelier collections: Chardonnay, Bordeaux (Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot), Shiraz-Syrah, Burgundy (Pinot Noir) and the only one with a split personality, the Zinfandel/Riesling, useful for both red and white. All Riedel glassware is rimless, another great design element for enhancing wine tasting. To test these styles, I chose five of our top local varieties: Les Bourgeois Chardonel, Crown Valley Traminette, Adam Puchta Vignoles, Augusta Chambourcin and Stone Hill Norton.
In two groupings, nearly 60 people were part of this test, which turned out to be a great advantage for my research since neither group knew the opinions or findings of the other. (The reason for the limited seating at each seminar was that I could only fit six racks of glasses in the back seat of my Chevy.)
Each of the five wines was poured into the set of five glasses. The typical swirls and sniffs and slurps occurred, and then the votes were cast. It quickly became clear that the various shapes had several effects on the wine. The larger bowls of the Syrah, Cabernet and Pinot Noir glasses allowed for a lot of breathing of the wine, helping the reds, but not necessarily doing any favors for the whites. The bowl shapes also focused the aromas and intensified the varietal characters, but each also changed where the wine hit the tongue, which ultimately affects how each wine tastes.
So which glass did the best job for each varietal?
Chardonel, to no surprise, was benefited most by the Chardonnay shape. Since one of Chardonel’s parents is Chardonnay (the other is Seyval Blanc), this made total sense. The Zin/Riesling glass, the best all-purpose style, also had a few admirers.
In the first session, Traminette was voted best in the Zin/Riesling glass, although the second session was a bit more divided. The Riedel list of wine types for this glass also includes Gewürztraminer, which is one of the parents of Traminette and very similar in character when made in a sweeter style.
Vignoles was the varietal that was the most schizophrenic for glass shape affinity. The first group liked Zin/Riesling and Cabernet glasses nearly equally, while the second group preferred the Chardonnay and Zin/Riesling exactly 50-50. Since I was running the tasting, I gave the tie-breaking nod to the Zin/Riesling glass, which, like the Traminette, shows off the Germanic style of this light, fruity and slightly sweet white. The styles of Traminette and Vignoles are not that far apart, so it is understandable that the same glass would work well for both.
Now to the real meat of the tasting, red wine. Both the Chambourcin and Norton were totally “dumbed down” in the Chardonnay glass. The same was true in the Zin/Riesling glass, which was a surprise to me. I had anticipated the Chambourcin, having some of the same character as the spicy Zinfandel, would work in the same glass. Nope, wrong-o. Instead, Cabernet and Pinot Noir were the glass winners in the first session, Cabernet and Syrah in the second. It was obvious that the three red-wine glasses were all working well with the Chambourcin, but the final result was that the Cabernet shape did the most for our best red hybrid.
When the Stone Hill Norton was poured into all five glasses, it was nearly unanimous that the two white wine glasses did nothing to enhance – and even worked to detract a bit from – the enormous character of our state grape. The Cabernet glass had its fans, but we generally agreed that the Pinot Noir glass elevated the nose and flavor of Norton to a new high.
The lesson I took away from the tasting is how well these glasses accentuated the international quality of Missouri wines. Riedel has many different price levels – the basic shape is generally the same; the difference is the grade of glass itself – and there are other companies whose shapes follow its lead, including Spiegelau and Schott Zwiesel. Choosing which to buy needn’t be complicated; just look for the vinifera varietal designations within your price range.
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