Sommelier Breaks Down Every Wine Glass

Hey, I'm sommelier André Mack,

and today I'm gonna tell you about

a whole bunch of different wine glasses.

Wine glasses change your perception

and how you experience drinking wine.

And there's certain things that

that glass should have,

to lend to a great wine-drinking experience.

There are some really cool reasons

behind why these glasses were designed the way they were.

We're gonna start with the Burgundy glass.

Most glasses, wine glasses will have four key components.

You'll have the lip, you have the bowl,

you have the stem, and then you'll have the base.

The most striking feature of a Burgundy glass is,

it's kind of balloon shape.

The purpose of the large bowl is to capture the aromatics.

So you have something that's very aromatic,

something like pinot noir, that's poured in this glass.

And as you swirl, the vapors get trapped

because it's kind of got this cone shape here.

You want to hold it by the stem,

so you don't alter the temperature of the wine.

You see in the movies where people grab it like this,

or they swirl like this.

It seems all awkward.

Generally, we say it's called stemware for a reason.

Use It.

You want to have a really thin lip here,

so it's not bulky, so it kind of like

just pours smoothly over your palette.

When you have something really bulky,

you feel that transition.

I know that seems crazy and very small,

but the thinner the rim, the better.

The delivery for all the wines

are due to it's shape.

It feels like it's at a triangle,

so it pours into one point of my mouth

and then kind of spreads back

to the either side of my mouth.

Sides of my tongue start to tingle.

Pinot noir is a high acid grape.

So I really get to experience the delivery, I think is,

is one of the great things about it.

Along with being able to admire the aromatics.

I love this glass.

I drink tons of different wines out of it.

I make margaritas is out of it.

Margaritas is out of this glass are the best.

It's a multipurpose glass in my home

because we do drink a lot of Burgundy,

and pinot noir.

This is the glass that we tend to lean-to.

This is a Bordeaux glass slash Cabernet glass.

The wines from Bordeaux tend to lend heavy

on Cabernet Sauvignon.

The shape of this glass is interesting.

It just looks like an oversized wine glass.

It kind of looks like it got stung with a bee you know,

it's got like, it's got a allergic reaction to it.

So this one has a little bit more narrow bowl,

than considering the Burgundy glass.

Generally speaking, Cabernet needs a lot more air.

So you won't have the lips of the glass

curving in to trap aromatics.

Cabernet and Bordeaux are very tannic.

Needs a lot of headroom, a lot of breathing room here.

So you have lots of volume here,

to allow oxygen to help decant the wine,

and soften the wine.

Always look at these,

as being somewhat of a mini-decanter.

The delivery is definitely a little bit faster.

As soon as you tip the glass,

it starts to cover the pallet from the front to the back.

This is, has kind of a linear shape

with a slight curvature to it.

Delivers the wine pretty evenly on your palette.

I would recommend this glass to most people.

I think a lot of people are attracted to it,

because of the way it looks.

It's elegant from afar.

I always think that it's a great glass,

especially if you're drinking reds.

So this is in fact a chardonnay white wine glass.

It's short in stature.

It has a small bowl,

not a lot of headroom here.

Red wine needs lots of oxygen, lots of air.

So you will tend to find really huge bowls.

White wine, a little bit more aromatic, more acidity.

And so you want to have a smaller bowl.

So in size,

this is almost half the size of the previous glass.

We have a little brown chardonnay from Napa valley.

You know, something interesting about this glass.

Like, I would prefer to drink this wine

out of the previous glass.

It just seems like the delivery would fill a lot better.

This all comes as like a rush.

All of a sudden it's all in your mouth.

And it doesn't feel like the right glass

for this particular wine, in my opinion.

This looks like a dessert wine glass,

that you would serve port out of,

or fortified wine out of.

People don't drink copious amounts of dessert wine.

Generally, it's on the sweet heavier side,

higher in alcohol.

So this is a smaller glass for that,

almost kind of the same shape as a typical wine glass.

a little bit more fluted,

the kind of catch the aromatics.

This is called white port.

Did you know it was such a thing?

Standard glass pour of wine, is five ounces,

but dessert wine pours about three ounces.

If I was a consumer going into a place,

and you poured me three ounces in a very large glass,

people would think that it's an under pour.

And I think the delivery

kind of like shoots more into the center of my palette.

Like definitely where I accentuate sugar.

I don't know if it enhances the experience, in that sense.

I like how it's proportioned.

Other than that, like,

if I'm at the dinner table, when you pull out these glasses,

I know that we're moving on to something else of like,

It's like Oh my God like it's port or sweet wine

it's dessert, it's sauterne.

Changing the shape and style,

kind of sets the tone, as well.

On to probably the most famous shaped glass ever.

This is called the Champagne flute.

Very narrow here, as you can look in here.

Maybe two inches wide to help facilitate

the bubbles rising to the top.

Because it is the most famous in stature.

I always think it's a great way

to be able to dress up sparkling wine.

And so what I decided to do is,

pour a little bit of Moscato d'Asti.

If you'd pour sparkling wine in a wide surface,

it's more surface to air ratio.

Bubbles will disappear very quickly.

If you pour them in a very narrow glass,

they will continue to come up

because they don't have as much room to expand.

And so this keeps the glass full of bubbles.

I love this glass.

I think I love it less and less for actual Champagne.

Where, you know, Champagne to me is also considered wine.

I think that it should be poured,

in a white wine glass.

The flute don't allow you to really evaluate a wine.

It doesn't allow us to really kind of swirl,

can't really fit into the glass.

But for something like this,

this is, fun, and this is great.

And I think it's celebratory,

and it's a way to put you know,

25-inch rims on your Moscato d'Asti.

What we have here, is considered the predecessor

of the Champagne flute.

This is called a coupe.

It's a short squatty glass, pretty thick,

not a seamless rim.

Legend has it,

that it is the shape of Marie Antoinette's breast.

I'll leave you with that.

This is a little floral cider looks beautiful in this glass,

but you know,

there's all of this surface area to release bubbles,

You know, So it's kind of like the complete opposite

of a Champagne flute.

It all kind of comes rushing to the top.

It doesn't allow you to swirl.

You know, I mean,

you still can sniff.

It's kind of hard to maneuver too, right?

You know, but this reminds me of like, you know,

getting a cocktail.

And you know, the first thing you do,

you pick it up and you sip it like that.

The glass lends more to a cocktail sparkling wine,

that doesn't need to be evaluated.

And that's why I always think it's cooler

to pour something like this in it,

some real sparkling cider,

still fun and still serious.

Next step, this is the stemless class.

It's kind of missing a couple of the parts

that we talked about in glassware.

There's no stem, there's no base.

This probably came around in the late 1990s,

early 2000's to encourage people to drink wine more casually

and still have some of the elements.

So, it still has the wide bowl.

You can still kind of swirl this way.

A little bit of rosé.

These two things kind of came into prominence,

right around the same time.

Good wine in a box.

Glasses that aren't considered dainty,

or fragile because of the stem or the base,

and being able to enjoy those things at a picnic.

I felt like these two things are a match made in heaven.

You're picking it up by the side.

It's like a traditional glass.

You're drinking a wine that you're knocking back, right?

It's not this serious thing.

And I think this class is great.

I know a lot of people who hate this glass,

and I don't hate on it.

It's bringing more people to the party,

the wine party that is,

and I'm grateful to that.

So next up is actually a white wine glass.

I like to call it an all-purpose glass.

And lends to a great drinking experience,

all across the board, in my opinion,

It is definitely on the expensive side.

It's not a big giant bowl, but it is pretty thin.

Touching it, you feel like you can break it with your mind.

So this is a blend of Cabernet,

and Cabernet Franc from the Willamette Valley.

Glass is just lightweight. Elegant.

The experience is just different

from the vessel that it's poured in.

The delivery is just seamless.

The lip is absolutely razor-thin,

and I think all wine can benefit from that.

It is tapered enough to kind of trap all of those aromatics

that I want to capture from wines across the board,

If I had to choose one glass,

to drink every wine out of, this would be the glass.

You can definitely find versions of glasses like this,

that costs less.

Will they be exactly the same? No.

But you don't need this particular glass,

to choose one glass.

You know what I mean?

Like I think, like to simplify your life,

if you have one glass that you enjoy drinking out of,

maybe that's the glass you should be drinking out of.

So do you need any of this glassware,

to elevate your experience?

I think only you get to decide that.

But these are some of the ones that are out here.

I definitely think that it's fun to dress up wine sometimes,

and put them in a glass that you really like,

to elevate your experience.

And in the end, you can always take it straight to the head

and go from the bottle.

Tastes just as good.

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