How Many Different Wine Glasses Do You really Need?

How Many Different Wine Glasses Do You Really Need?

Bryce Sanders, President

Perceptive Business Solutions Inc.

So many different shapes of wine glasses!? If you visit a Williams Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn or IKEA you know there are plenty of different shapes in the wine glass section of the store.? How many do you really need?? In my opinion, a wine fan needs ten different shapes.? This should cover almost any entertaining scenario.

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Ten sounds like a lot.? Why that many?? Do I really need glasses specifically for Reisling or Shiraz?? What If I never drink Riesling or Shiraz?? The number ten comes up for a different reason.? The shape is secondary to the composition.

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I am making the case there are as many as ten shapes the versatile wine fan needs.? You probably want four, six or eight of each, depending on how much you entertain.

1.????? The red wine glass.? In stores, it is associated with Bordeaux or Cabernet.? It is tall.? The bowl is large and it tapers in at the top.? When you visit an upscale restaurant, wine bar to vineyard restaurant, it’s the type they often give you.? If you entertain eight people at a table, you need eight, one for each person.

2.????? The white wine glass.? You have some choice here.? The shape associated with chardonnay looks like a softball on a stem.? It is round, sliced off at the top.? Another style, often associated with Sauvignon Blanc, looks like a smaller version of the red wine glass.? They look good together.

3.????? The champagne flute.? You can make the case champagne tastes as good (or better) from a conventional wine glass, but society has not caught onto that yet.? If you watch people drinking champagne at a wedding, charity gala or on TV, they are using flutes.? People expect that.? You need them.

4.????? The shorter wine glass.? This looks like a scaled down version of the red wine glass.? It is about seven inches high.? The attractive feature is they fit easily into your dishwasher.? The taller ones above are either awkward to load or need to be washed by hand.? These are your everyday, casual drinks with friends glasses.

These are not essential, but they are useful in certain situations.? They also can do double duty, serving other purposes.

5.????? The stemless red wine glass.? I think Riedel introduced them and everyone else jumped on board.? This glass looks like the red wine glass at the top of the list, but it has no stem.? It’s more like a tumbler, but it is the right shape.? This is for more casual settings, but it serves another purpose.? From time to time you will entertain someone who is clumsy or has difficulty holding a stemmed glass.? This allows you to include them and reduce the potential embarrassment factor.? When you are the host, this is important. ????

6.????? The stemless white wine glass.? You own these for the same reason as the stemless red wine glasses.? These are often shorter versions of the Chardonnay (white wine) glass mentioned above.? They can do double duty at a dinner party, serving as the water glass for each guest.? The stemless glasses load easily into your dishwasher.

Now we get into stemware used outside your house.? Obviously you do not want to be using breakable glass on the lawn in your backyard or in your pool.

7.????? The red wine glass in plastic.? Let us assume you entertain outside during the summer.? It could be a picnic on your terrace or patio.? It might be a concert in the park.? You pack a picnic basket and put effort into the food.? You could serve wine in red plastic cups, but it spoils the effect.? You can but stemmed wine glasses identical to the ones mentioned above for dinner parties, but molded in plastic. They often turn up at Marshalls/HomeGoods during the warm weather months.

8.????? The stemless wine glass in plastic.? Sometimes bringing formal looking glassware to a picnic looks pretentious, even if it is durable plastic.? You still want to make an effort.? We have the stemless version of one shape in plastic, which doubles as a water glass.? This assumes you are not drinking water for half liter plastic bottles without a glass.

9.????? The flexible plastic champagne flute.? When we fly internationally, we often pack a picnic for the flight.? It fits into a 6x6x9 inch soft sided zippered case, about the size of the lunchbox you remember from childhood.? We include a couple of stemless champagne flutes along with linen napkins.? These are not hard plastic, meaning they are unlikely to break when you pack them.? When the flight attendant rolls the beverage cart through coach (we fly coach), ask if they have Champagne, mentioning you are willing to pay for it.? They will see those neat stemless champagne flutes and your white cloth napkins.? I have found they often bring you champagne from first class and do not ask you to pay anything.

10.? The flexible stemless wine glass.? These are helpful even if you don’t bring a picnic on board the plane, are fine with drinking the wine served in coach, but prefer a little style.? Instead of drinking from the plastic cup provided, you have a nicer glass.

Ten styles of wine glasses might sound “over the top.”? You are right, but you are providing for every occasion possible.

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Bryce Sanders is president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc.? He provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry.? His book, “Captivating the Wealthy Investor” is available on Amazon.

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