Your Ultimate Guide to Different Types of Wine Glasses
- , by Team Experts
- 3 min reading time
Familiarize yourself with the art of Grape Varietal Specific glassware.
Familiarize yourself with the art of Grape Varietal Specific glassware.
Whatever wine you're sipping - be it white or red, sweet or dry, light or full-bodied, using the appropriate glass is essential for allowing it to reach its full flavor potential.
Every wine benefits from a specific glass shape that best enhances its aromas, flavors, and overall character, and gaining an understanding of this allows you to ;raise the level of all your future wine-drinking experiences :
🍷Cabernet/Merlot glasses
Best for: Cabernet, Merlot, Red Zinfandel, Carménère, Cabernet Franc.
The RIEDEL Cabernet/Merlot glass is perfect for full-bodied, complex red wines high in tannins. Tall and broad, each RIEDEL Cabernet/Merlot glass offers ample bowl space, emphasizing the wine's fruit notes and smoothing out the rough edges and bitter qualities of high tannin wines, helping them to achieve a beautiful balance. With a modestly wide opening, this glass contains some of the complex attributes of fuller-bodied wines, allowing for a greater nosing experience.
🍷Pinot Noir/Nebbiolo glasses
Best for: Pinot Noir, Burgundy red, Nebbiolo.
The RIEDEL Pinot Noir/Nebbiolo glass is perfect for light-bodied red wines with higher acidity and moderate tannins. Each RIEDEL Pinot Noir/Nebbiolo glass features a signature wide bowl design that is crucial for optimizing Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo wines. This exaggerated width allows for unhindered aeration of the wine, which is particularly beneficial for light-bodied reds that benefit from having their qualities develop further after pouring. This increased aeration the glass offers, balances high acidity with the soft tannins and fruit-forward flavors typical of thin-skinned red wine grapes.
🍷Chardonnay/Viognier Glasses (Unoaked Chardonnay)
Best for: Unoaked Chardonnay, Viognier, Pinot Grigio
Chardonnay/Viognier glasses provide the exception to the rule about white wine glass sizes in that they can be split into two categories that can suit either fresh, vibrant white wines or complex, full-bodied white wines.
RIEDEL Chardonnay/Viognier glasses for unoaked white wines fall into the classic 'smaller white wine glass' mold. These U-shaped glasses feature a slightly wider rim than Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc glasses, making them ideal for setting off the alcohol and rich flavors of fuller-bodied but still unoaked white wines while allowing them to express their freshness, spiciness, and mineral character.
🍷Chardonnay/Viognier Glasses (Oaked Chardonnay)
Best for: Oaked Chardonnay and other oaked white wine styles.
RIEDEL Oaked Chardonnay glasses feature a much larger, wider bowl that helps reveal the intensity of full-bodied, oaked white wines, including the wine's multi-layered aromas. A smaller wine glass can see fuller-bodied white wines become over-concentrated, whereas our larger RIEDEL Chardonnay Glasses emphasize the wine's finesse while allowing richer-style white wines qualities to expand and deliver to the nose and palate in a more
balanced manner.