I Don't Always Drink Wine Out of Wine Glasses

Last night I finished the bottle of Cabernet Franc that I’d been nursing for the past three days. I poured the final drops into one of my favorite glasses. It’s a set that I picked up in Morocco a few years ago. Hand blown tumblers, they’re beautiful but not what normally comes to mind when you think of a vessel for wine consumption. But the truth is, more often than not, when I’m hanging out at home and leisurely drinking a glass of wine, this is what I use.

It all started about ten years ago when I was in Brazil. The drinking culture there is to pour large format bottles of beer into short glasses and spend hours talking, drinking and basking in the sun. Since then, I’ve just loved the informality and camaraderie that short glasses bring. Yes, I realize that my example has to do with beer which is automatically considered less casual than wine…but that’s kind of my point. Why can’t wine be as laid back as beer is? Don’t get me wrong, I will fully admit that wine tastes differently depending on the glass it’s served in, however, sometimes I’m just drinking table wine.

I’m not the only one that thinks so. In other countries where wine is more ingrained in the culture, short drinking glasses for wine abound. I noticed it in Italy and Spain and I think we can agree that they know a thing or two about wine.

This doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t like delicately holding the stem of a glass and pressing my nose inside to try and capture all the flavors. For the most part though, I save those for tasting and good bottles of wine. When I’m binge-watching episodes of the Sopranos and trying to finish a bottle of okay wine before it turns rancid…I grab my tumbler.