"glassware" news and stories

You'd think standard bar glass sizes exist to keep our lives simple. The reality is that every vessel from the wine glass to the shot glass ranges in capacity. You'd think a shot glass is a shot glass, but you might find a standard squat shot glass holding one and a half ounces and a tall skinny one holding more than two ounces. Apparently all shots are not equal unless you use a jigger to fill the glass.

The marketing of wine glasses by Austrian crystal company Riedel (pronounced to rhyme with needle) taught us that rolled edges on the lip of a glass make the liquid fall into the mouth in a clunky way. Taste tests show over and over that many folks prefer the flavor of a beverage from a smooth, polished edge. For some reason, this makes drinking anything a more pleasant experience from the softer feel on the lips to the better taste on the tongue.

Even with a fine wine glass company like Riedel, a red wine glass is not a red wine glass. You can purchase a stemless glass holding 20 ounces all the way up to the Sommeliers Burgundy Grand Cru stem, the world's largest wine glass, at 37 ounces capacity. In 1960 this fish bowl of a glass was placed in the permanent design collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art.

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.

Every good beer drinker knows drinking out of the bottle is a no-no (Busch Light drinkers excluded). The only way to get the full nose and aroma is to pour that bottled brew into the proper glassware.

Still, sometimes having your buddy turn to you and ask, "Don't you want a glass for that?" can be equally annoying. Beer snobbery has become as growing a concern to the casual beer drinker almost as much as seasonal beer food pairings have been worrying the aforementioned beer snob.

Well, finally someone has come up with a solution. Fred & Friends has produced the Hopside Down beer glass. This glassware is designed to look like a longneck beer bottle, but turned upside-down with the bottom sliced off. The effect: The look of drinking out of a bottle but leaving an open air environment to let your nose enjoy all those precious hop and malt scents.

I haven't actually tried these glasses yet, so I can't vouch for their quality, but they certainly look cool. (And people who drink beer always do it to look cool!)

[via Al Dente]

If you're like me, this week is probably prime holiday gift purchasing time. Black Friday mayhem has well since waned, but plenty of days are still left before I have to pay the FedEx Overnight tax on my tardiness.

If you have a beer lover in your family, you're in luck: Continued growth in the craft and specialty beer markets means more beer-related products than ever before are hitting store shelves and web retailers, many of them new for the 2008 season.

Case in point: One of the world's oldest glass manufacturers, Spiegelau, has introduced a new line of "Beer Classics" -- glassware shaped for traditional beer drinkers' tastes, but with an eye towards innovation (pictured above). After spending the past 500 years primarily focusing on wine-related products, Spiegelau's Beer Classics apply that experience and expertise to creating lightweight pints with the delicate feel you'd expect from wine stemware, quickly becoming the most elegant of my go-to glasses. With each two glass set packaged in attractive and shipping-friendly tubes, these make great last minute gifts. I even saw them sitting register-side at a local beer shop which can feed into anyone's gift purchasing laziness.

But if you're not looking to drop $30 on a couple of beer glasses (especially if your favorite beer enthusiast tends to break more than he washes), here's another great gift idea that can have a personal touch: Buying branded glassware direct from a beloved brewery. Most breweries offer glassware on their website. The prices can be (please note, I say "can be," not "are") more reasonable and you know your purchase isn't just supporting your favorite brewery in appearance, but financially as well.

Whether your approach is upmarket or down-home, beer glassware is always a great gift, and one that can (and should) be used immediately! (Yes! I am advocating testing our your new beer glass on Christmas morning!)

[Photo Credit: Spiegelau]

Several years ago, wine charms entered the marketplace and became all the rage. They were cute little doodads that you slipped onto the stem of your wine glass during parties, making it easier to determine which glass was yours out of the sea of glassware on the coffee table. I always liked the idea of wine charms, but in practice, I found them sort of fussy and far to easy to lose in the post-party cleaning up process.

I've always dealt with the problem of glass confusion by using my collection of mismatched glasses for all party drinks, wine, beer and soda included. However, last night I discovered another option that, I must admit, has got me swooning over glassware for the first time in my life. Check out these fantastic chalkboard glasses! Write a quick note on the glass prior to pouring and never again risk getting a swig of your date's drink instead of your own. I imagine that with a little chalkboard paint and some cheap glasses, this could also turn into a fun DIY project.

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