This could be dangerous.

Most people of legal drinking age have at some point mastered the necessary spatial relation between wine and standard glass to allow themselves an enjoyable portion while not getting totally sloppy after one initial serving. Riedel's new suite of machine-blown TriO red and white wine tumblers blows that all to hell. Their groundbreaking sans-stem O Tumbler takes a cue from the Champagne and beer end of the product line to reunite with a beehived, hollow base that's ridiculously pleasing the hand, and ever so easy to over-fill.

F'rinstance, the (very) generous pour in the dime-a-dozen IKEA glass on the right is the same quantity as seen in the TriO on the left. I tend to be a glass-oughta-be-full kind of girl, and found myself having to quite consciously refrain from serving right on up to the usual mark. There are worse problems to have, and these glasses are possessed of none of them. As mentioned before, the grooved stem is a treat to hold, the design quite visually appealing, and, joy of joys, they're dishwasher-friendly.

At $30 for a three-pack, they're not quite IKEA cheap, but they're hardly a $106 Sommelier's Grüner Veltliner Glass, either. The wine, by the way, is a $10.99 2004 Kanonkop Kadette from South Africa's Stellenbosch region and if you can't find it in a store near you, it's prolly because I went in and bought all of it. Sorry.

There's a stigma attached to those who extol the virtues of proper glassware. But the fact is -- they're right. The vessel used for your drink will affect not only the liquid that's poured inside, but also the way it hits your tongue, and the flavor your taste buds register.

I used to blow this off as overly fastidious, fancy schmancy posturing. I hated getting pints of beer or glasses of soda because it always tasted flat to me. I preferred that crisp bite out of the bottle -- glass be damned!

But then I experienced the differences for myself. While visiting a winery a number of years ago, my friends and I sat in on a glassware class. A myriad of shapes and sizes were placed in front of us, and we tried white, red, and sparkling wine in the different glasses. Each tasted different as it was moved from the standard white glass, to the wider red, to the narrow flute. We were shocked, and we vowed to always try to have the right glass for the right wine, because what's the point of paying more for a good wine, if you can't experience its full flavor?

But it's not just a matter of wine. Recently, I was making dinner and decided to open a bottle of craft beer that I had loved at my favorite pub a few months prior. I popped off the cap, took a drink, and curled my lip -- it not only tasted nothing like I remembered, but I hated it. I thought back and remembered that I drank the beer at the end of the night. Did I have bad, delusional drunken taste buds? I read the side of the bottle, which suggested a specific stemmed glass. I found something close, poured it in, and it became the beer I remembered -- rich, full, and wonderful. Me, the bottle lover, had found a beverage that tasted much, much better out of the bottle.

Now this doesn't mean that you need to have a specific glass for every different type of beer or booze. Get the right glasses, or something very close, for your favorite beverages, and stick to standards for the rest.

Think about it -- why splurge on a great scotch, wine, beer, or other beverage if you're just going to throw it into any old glass?

Read on to see a rundown of the glasses that make each beverage pop, and consider this not only a great guide for your own collection, but an excellent gift for the liquor, wine, or beer fiend on your gift list.

Champagne Flute

These narrow glasses are perfect for housing your bubbly wine. The long body allows the carbonation to gently rise and give us that bubbly image we're used to. Meanwhile, the narrow top help keeps your sparkling wine fresh for as long as possible by capturing the carbonation. In a wider glass, the wine would go flat much quicker.




Sherry Glass

This glass will remind you of a regular wine tasting glass -- not particularly curved or tapered. However, the big difference is the rim. It does not taper like the wine glasses, and it can often have a wider rim than base.

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• Recipe: Apple Ginger Crisp with Honey Mascarpone

Many a-blog has a hugely talented photographer behind it; many of these participate in my (and Sams) monthly photo challenge over on flickr. Foodography is all about taking pictures to a theme regardless of your level of expertise or humbleness of photo equipment. Feed back is encourage so all can learn and improve. And even if you are not 'in to' photography yourself you can always admire the very best of food porn.

Round 7 of Foodography has been announced. This has a theme of Wine Bottle and Glass. This is a subject you see over and over again but are any of the images memorable enough - or, as I expect, tend to the plain, dull and unadventurous? Head over to flickr for the first uploaded shots and leave some comments if you see something you like.

Alcohol - we all know that certain people are more susceptible to suffering addiction than others. This story in the Independent says that 5 or 10 years ago, the average age patients with an alcohol problem was about 45; now it is about 35 and we are seeing people as young as 18 who are alcoholics.

And the reason they site for this worrying problem? Over-sized wine glasses. There is a trend for serving wine in ever larger glasses. I am not sure why. Perhaps it lends a sense of generosity, of extravagance or a sign of decadence that our prosperous society is reveling in at the moment.

"People have become used to these outsized glasses. They fill them up and believe it's OK because they are only having one glass, but that can now amount to a third of a bottle. If they have a small glass, they feel cheated."

In the UK the old 'standard' serving of wine was in a 125ml glass which contains one unit of alcohol, but a standard pub measure was increased to 175ml last year and larger glasses may contain as much as 250ml.