Which wine glasses to buy

With the sales still in full swing it’s a good time to be snapping up cut price wine glasses but which kind should you buy and how many do you need?

If you’ve got room to store them the ideal is to have four different types: a medium-sized wine glass for white wines, a bigger one for full-bodied reds, a small one for dessert wines and fortified wines such as sherry and port and a tall champagne ‘flute’ for serving sparkling wines. (A tall glass keeps the bubbles fizzing away longer than the old-fashioned saucer shape)

From a wine drinking (rather than an appearance) point of view they should be made of clear rather than coloured glass so that you can fully appreciate the colour of the wine you’re drinking and slightly tapered towards the top to trap the aromas in the glass. The rim should be thin and fine and the stem long enough for you to be able to hold it without having to clutch the bowl, which will transfer heat from your hand to the wine. (There’s a more detailed guide, for those of you who are interested, on a website called www.wineglasses.co.uk which supplies to the trade.)

Good makes include the Austrian glass firm Riedel (which actually has a glass for different grape varieties including one monster of a burgundy glass that holds an entire bottle!), Schott Zwiesel and Dartington but there are some excellent value Polish and Czech glasses around currently at less than half the price. If you find that glasses get broken regularly in your household John Lewis has a basic range at just £15 for 6 glasses.

You can order Riedel glasses on Amazon now, amazingly. (Is there anything they don’t sell these days?) The American site has some particularly good deals.

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