Wines and the Glasses Appropriate to Them It is an essential fact that the pleasure of drinking good wine is vastly enhanced by drinking it out of an appropriate glass; equally is it marred by drinking it out of a bad or unsuitable glass. "Quite wonderful," as Professor Saintsbury has said, are "the whimsics wine has og to the receptacles from which it likes to be drunk." The same is true in a lesser degree of coarser liquors. Beer is good out of silver, but better out of ' pewter; and even whisky and soda improves when drunk out of a fine, heavy, cut glass.
But the drinking of wine is essentially higher occupation and a joy of many subtleties. It is a pleasure to which every sense contributes, if it is nob too far fetched to say tha: the sound of wine being poured from a decanter is a pleasurable sound, Taste is so important 'a matter that it is axiomatic among wine drinkers that nothing must be taken to dull it when drinkitig a fine vintage—no salad with the smallest suspicion of vinegar and no smoking of tobacco. Much of the joy of a fine wine is in its aroma (here the importance of the right glass will presently be seen), much in the sight of its ruby loveliness, and, lastly, there is joy in a beautiful wine glass with "a stem te play with, The great connoisseurs, we are told, demand no more than old flint glass of crystal clearness. For them elaborately cut or engraved glass has no charm. They demand one thing only—that they should be able to see and smell their wine with no distractions of art or artifice. Old flint glass may be very beautiful, but I see no reason why less exalted wine Grinkers should be condemned to this asceticism. There is only one principle which should guide them—the glass should never be too elaborate to dim the colour of the wine that is drunk out of it, and therefore it should (with very rare exceptions) never be coloured itself. Certain kinds of light German wines, for instance, may be drunk out of faintly green or biscuit-coloured glass.
As to shape and size, convention lays down its rules which it varies but little.
For: red wines, burgundies, clarets, ete. the best glass is one of generous size with a pinched-in lip. And the glass should never on any account be more than half filled from the decanter. After it is poured in, it should be circulated slowly round the glass by holding the stem between thumb and forefinger. The pinched-in lip will hold the aroma longer than an open glass, and this should be enjoyed before the wine is drunk. This glass is of universal service and is excellent for nearly all wines (except dessert wines), including champagnes; it is, in fact, now universally used for champagne in all hotels and restaurants, 'Champagne provides one of the few instances of caprice in the matter of th glass from which it 'The champagne gla: was a tall, narrow fluted glass, more like a flower vase than a wine gi 'Thi gave way to the "inverted ballet skirt' form—said to have been one of the marks of the, viciousness of the Second Empire! Vicious or no, it is now much out of favour, and is, I think, too flimsy and affected a receptacle for good champagne. (Champagne, by the way, is one of the few wines which can be drunk with pleasure from a silver tankard.)
Dessert wines and aperatif wines, sherry, vermouth, port, Tokay, Yquem, all naturally demand smaller glasses. Sherry thas been called the most accommodating of wines, but it is best drunk out of a slightly narrower glass (with a short stem) than that used for port. Sherry, especially brown sherry, may be very beautiful in colour, and I feel sure, as with port, that the argument for cut glass is incontestable. Finely cut glass, heavy in weight, is exceedingly pleasant to handle, and the serrations split up the ight through which the wine is seen.
absolutely plain glass may give a clearer vision of the wine in bulk, but it does not reflect the light of candles, and the silver* Which sparkles underneath them, in the same degree as cut daas.
special word must be given to brandy. First-rafe cognac is the king of liqueurs and bagas beaatiful''a bouquet as any wine, This should be respected
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.