Wine Glasses

Concours Mondial de Bruxelles

Concours Mondial de Bruxelles (CMB) is an international wine and spirits competition held each year. They have separate wine sessions, as well as spirits sessions. At CMB, each wine is blind tasted by at least five highly trained professionals from different nationalities (see this short video); a lot of judges will be called to grade more than ten thousand wines each year from all over the world. So, we can be sure that they know what kinds of wine glasses are good for wine.

CMB recommends these white wine glasses, these red wine glasses; they will mostly use similar, but different glasses for rose wines, see here (picture), and here (video). Judges often choose their own glasses, but they are of similar shape and volume. The only hard set rule is for the judges to use the same kind of a glass for all wine, not to allow the glass to interfere with wine aromas, because the shape can release too much (if glass is too wide), or too little (if too narrow) aroma. Here you can see a photo of a judge tasting a white wine; here, a red wine.

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Decanter Awards

Decanter Awards is an other esteemed international wine competition that grades thousands of wines. Take a look at the glasses for this white wine judge setup; This red wine setup; And here’s an article that shows different kinds of wines in glasses for tasting. Here you can see a short video presenting red, white, rose wine tasting with the same kind of a glass. Here, orange wine judging is seen with yet the same kind of a glass.

Decanter Awards facilitates Riedel wine glasses.

Wine glasses for everyday use by a knowledgeable person

Wine judges mostly use the above seen glasses, so they are a safe choice when choosing wine glasses for everyday consummation. Yet, these glasses have some wine competition characteristics that influence their shape. For everyday drinking, we could choose glasses that enhance the experience. For instance, wider glasses leave a much better visual effect. One may choose more stylish wine glass, or at least a wider one, which definitely enhances the experience.

One of the many wine professionals is Jeff Cox, who proposes these glasses in one of his books that i bought:

My suggestions

Try this: Take two glasses, one considerably more wide than the other, and put wine from the same bottle in them, then swirl a bit. You will notice that the wider one releases a considerably more intense aroma. This is due to more wine vapor that has been released because the liquid creates more surface area to evaporate from.

When we drink wine, white wine usually is served at a lower temperature, so it needs more surface to evaporate more in order to leave its aromatic effect on the consumer.

So, in my everyday wine drinking i like a thin rimmed, wide glass, but not too wide (because too much is always… mentally distasteful). For my white wine, i like just a bit wider thin rimmed glass.

I like the tulip shape more than the oval one, too, but that’s just a personal preference, for white, rose, and red wine. I like the above glass because is not too tall, not too low, not too wide, on the verge of becoming too wide, but still not too wide, more than enough to release a lot of aroma with each sip. You may like an other one more, and that’s OK. Cheers!

P.S. Again. I own a winery, this is a facebook fan-page, please like it. Please follow the instagram page here.