Conversations with Terry Theise – Part 2: Stemware

Several weeks ago when Terry Theise asked me to do a blog exchange (sometimes called a “ramble”) in which we’d ask each other questions in a sort of rambling email interview, I noticed that on his blog he would sometimes give tasting notes for various wines from different stemware. A wine might give slightly different impressions in “the Jancis,” for example. So I decided to ask about his current preferences in stemware. (For do we ever truly settle on one for the rest of our lives?)

So here’s our exchange, with views on stemware from perhaps the most thoughtful taster out there. And also a reason to dust off those Champagne flutes that are kicking around the back of the cupboard.

DM: Let’s talk stemware. What is your favorite? Do you have brand loyalty? I notice in your tasting notes you specify one or two types of glasses and give separate tasting impressions for each, almost as if you are tasting the glass (or its influence) as much as the wine. Do you go for the exZALTOed stemware, or are you more pedestrian? 

Terry Theise: My “official” position on stemware is along these lines: We actually cannot know how a wine tastes, only how it tasted in the glass we happened to have used. 

Let’s say we have a friend who always wears black, and suddenly one day he shows up wearing red. Same guy, but he looks completely different. You will get the analogy to wine in various glasses without my laboring the point.

But I resist the rabbit hole. I don’t have many types of stems, just the ones that work for me. I love my Spiegelau “white wine 1.0” (as I call it) because it is always good. It’s a faithful workhorse glass that does the job. I have two other Spiegelau stems but I’m not especially loyal to Spiegelau as such.

What I call the “Jancis glass” is similarly though differently flexible. It’s the cerebral glass, particularly for white wines. It’s a go-to for me, especially for reds and for old wines of either color. You’ll have noted I nearly always compare it with another glass, because the contrast is telling and one can glean a through-line in the wine, even as they express differently from one glass to the other.

I think we take glasses both too seriously and not seriously enough.

Terry Theise

For reds, I have the Riedel “Chianti Classico,” another Spiegelau (the basic “red wine”) and again the Jancis. I toggle among them depending on the wine in play.

I own the (three) MacNeil glasses but never use them for drinking and only rarely use them for tasting.

For bubblies, I have the first Juhlin and also the “2.0” version, which is smaller. They offer me what I need. I also have three types of conventional flutes, but only use them when I’m tasting (or drinking) from a bottle that’s been opened a few times, so that I can protect what’s left of the mousse.

I have respect for Zalto in general but find that the “universal” glass is homicidal to 90% of the wines poured into it. I cordially loathe that glass, and will reject it whenever I can.

All of this is discussed in my blog, especially in the first 12-18 months of postings.

To sum up, I do believe the glass “narrates” the wine, and of course this is crucially important to anyone who assesses wine for any reason. But that said, I think it’s silly to have fifty different glass types sitting around, and it’s ridiculous on its face to get lost in the whole “I must drink this wine from the Syrah from 1-5 years glass,” because the money you spend on your zillion glass options would be better spent on wine.

DM: I agree with you that one needn’t invest in all those silly varietal shapes. The opposite of that fixation is the idea that glassware doesn’t matter at all, and you might as well drink your wine out of jelly jars. My own advice to readers has been that the glass should be appropriate for the wine. If you routinely drink $20 or less wines, then it makes no sense to splurge on fancy stemware. But if you’re paying $$$ for an expensive wine, then a proper glass may help suss out those nuances you’re paying for. (And if you’re paying for prestige just to show off, you’ll want fancy stemware for the same reason.) 

Our current favorite is Sophienwald, or SW, an Austrian line Lily and I were impressed with at Compline in Napa back in 2019. They look sort of like Zalto but less pronounced in that narrow funnel that always isn’t big enough to stick a nose in. (Zalto, I mean.) And not as breakable. They are $50 a stem (though they now seem to have gone up to $60), with four shapes: Sparkling, which I love in that it combines the flute and tulip shape with the widest part about three quarters to the top. Then there’s a glass for “racy whites” like Riesling, Albarino, or even rosé, a narrow funnel of a glass with a wider base at the bowl. The third is an all-purpose, and if I were to buy only one shape, it would be this — and maybe the sparkling. I love the light weight a beautiful balance of these glasses — in other words, they feel classy. And they have fared well in comparison tastings with other types of glasses.

The fourth shape is the red wine glass. It’s more like a traditional Burgundy bowl, and is rather wide and low compared to the Riedel red wine giants. I find it a bit unwieldy when swirling, and at first I didn’t like it. But I’ve come around — it does a very good job of releasing red wine’s aromas rather than trying to aim them at a particular area of my sinuses. It’s not as pretty or graceful as the others, though.

And then just to sum it all up:

TT: I think we take glasses both too seriously and not seriously enough.