The Official Wine Thread - Page 1018

Yeah, the glassware was horrible, but it's not a fancy place. The cocktail glasses were actually very nice. Go figure.

I've sat with owners of very nice Italian restaurants, drinking very nice wine... out of small glass tumblers

Ah, PB, it's the '09. Haven't had that vintage yet. Just '08. Will get it, even at 15€, when I see it.

My Italian grandparents always drank their wine out of tumblrs. Maybe it is a thing.

While I will admit to having Bord, Burg, Champs, and Chard glasses I think the whole special glass thing can get taken too seriously. I use my Bords for a universal red and the Chards for universal whites and would certainly sip a good wine from whatever (clean) glass a person offered to poor it in.

It can definitely be taken too far... But with a bad glass, it just kills the nose of the wine IMO.

Nothing wrong with drinking a quaffing wine out of a tumbler, we've all been there... But definitely not what I want to drink anything decent out of.

In Prohibition it was legal to make your own wine from bulk grapes as long as you didn't sell it. All over California, the wops bought Zinfandel (aka Primitivo) from Napa and Lodi and made wine in their basements. My family stopped making home made (house made?) wine after Napa got going again. But one habit they never gave up was the "jelly glass." that's what they called them. Basically, re-purposed preserve jars used to drink wine. with the ridges for a screw top lid and all. they were still drinking plonk out of those jars well into the 1980s.

My mother's mother, who had class, would always use a real glass. But her husband and her father always used the jelly glass.

I debated getting proper glasses, but honestly I go through them so fast with breaking them and such it wouldn't be worth it. I don't want to bother having to hand wash fragile glasses especially when I do it with my cooking knives and such. Just more time and money. I buy these cheap ones now at this local kitchen store. They are german and like $16 for two. They are nice enough and I don't feel that bad if they break.

I really like these Zalta glasses. They are apparently pitched to match the earth's pitch that some aztecs or something or another felt brought out aromas and blah blah blah. I just think they look nice.

So you guys were like pre everything out of mason jar hipsters?

The first generation wops where I grew up made their own wine too. Not sure/can't remember where they got the grapes, nor do I have any idea what varietal they were, but I have some fond memories of summer nights where someone's dad would give us boys a green demi-john, with woven wicker half way up the side, to drink. Very fruity and usually effervescent and I'm sure probably low alcohol.

My great grandfather used to make his own wine. I don't know any of the details, but when he was alive it is all they would drink. Any wine I have tried that somebody made themselves has largely been crap.

One of the worst events of the year for me was when it was time to make the peppers. It was this horrible, endless task into which I would be conscripted to do the worst jobs like peel 50 bulbs of garlic. My mother would make the brine, which smelled up the whole house worse than a rotting seal carcas. Then ... oh never mind but we made crates and crates of these preserved peppers, aged them and gave them to various people. The caveat was always, if you got peppers, you had to give the jar back when you were done. We needed it for wine, I guess.

PB, I have had good luck with Schott Zweisel glasses. They are not unbreakable but they do break a lot less. I do wash them by hand, however. After a big party it can be a super pain in the ass but they are nice glasses and not that expensive.

I'm on this band wagon too, the titanium crystal ones.

+1 to this, these are indeed nice glasses, and very reasonably priced.