Wine 101: Glassware

Angela Aiello: Hi everybody, welcome to LeGourmet TV and I’m here with Laura Ruffolo as a product consultant for the LCBO and she’s going to help us go thru a little bit of glassware today. How do you use your different glasses and the wine that you want to put in that and how you want to do a tasting? So welcome Laura. Laura Ruffolo: Thank you, thanks for having me. Angela Aiello: So we’re her at the LCBO at Summerhill and what a massive LCBO it is. Laura Ruffolo: It is the largest LCBO on Ontario. Angela Aiello: Maybe you could tell us how you're going in the LBCO. Laura Ruffolo: Actually, it’s a funny story. I started taking the intro to wine appreciation class before I started working at the LCBO. It’s just some of these classes that are offered through the LCBO and I was hooked right away, I thought what a great job, what a great profession, you have to learn about wine, talk about wine and teach classes. So here I am. Angela Aiello: And here you are. Yeah wine is a great industry to work that’s for sure and so maybe you can tell us a little bit of what we’ve got here going on the glassware. Laura Ruffolo: Sure. So with wines, you can use just your standard glass but ideally you can have a red wine glass and a white wine glass. Now, with red wines, you want to use a larger glass and the reason for that is the red wine typically has larger smelly molecules, they’re heavier so you need to help it to aerate and to get all those aromatics out into the glass so you can actually smell the wines and you want to swirl it around like that so you can nose it. Angela Aiello: I have a trouble doing that. Laura Ruffolo: Exactly, yeah. Angela Aiello: And that’s a skill. Laura Ruffolo: When you have a larger glass, it’s easier to do that, whereas with white wines, because they’re lighter molecules, the smelly molecules as we call them are lighter. You don’t want them to vaporize and to go out into the air because then you’re not smelling them. So you want to concentrate them into the glass as you’re swirling so you have a nice concentrated area so you can smell them. Angela Aiello: And the smaller glass versus the bigger glass so the red wines need to oxygenate their wine a little bit more. Laura Ruffolo: Exactly. Angela Aiello: So it gives them more room for the smelly esters to go. Laura Ruffolo: That’s right. Angela Aiello: And the white wine keeps a little bit condensed for the aromatic waves as well right, okay. Laura Ruffolo: And for sparklings and champagnes you want to use what’s called a flute. So with these, sometimes you see the sparkling on those little coops. Those were the worst classes to be used for your sparkling because you lose all your bubbles and that’s what’s great about having a sparkling wine are the bubbles. When you have this tall flute here, you see, you’ve got that nice stream of bubbles flowing through in and you want to keep those bubbles in your sparkling so that’s why we use it. Angela Aiello: Hence the sparkling wine. Laura Ruffolo: Exactly. Angela Aiello: And a lot of people, sometimes swirl their sparkling wine and we definitely tell you don’t want to swirl your sparkling wine, it takes away the oxygen that comes from the bubbles so make sure you‘re not swirling your sparkling. Laura Ruffolo: You don’t want lose those carbon dioxide bubbles. Angela Aiello: That’s right. They we’re carved to put them in there. Laura Ruffolo: There you go. Angela Aiello: And then we have your traditional ISO glass, the tasting glass, then most people use in their home it’s a very versatile glass for any wine really right? Laura Ruffolo: This is the international standard that’s used amongst professionals for tasting wines and again this is the perfect glass for tasting because you’ve got that rounded ball in the bottom here and it’s condensed on the top so it does actually concentrate all those molecules again and so it allows you to swirl easily and to smell all those aromas in there. Angela Aiello: Get your nose right in there. Laura Ruffolo: Exactly. Angela Aiello: All of them are designed as well to fit your pallet the wine is designed to fit nicely in the glass and then the glass is designed so that the wine hits your pallet on your certain sweet, bitter or on your tongue in the right way. Laura Ruffolo: You can actually get even more and more specialized with your wine glasses and if you’re a beginner you might, you don’t really need to do this but once you get started, you kind of, it’s almost like an addiction to get all these different kinds of stem ware and but you can get one that are specific for Bordeaux or ones that are specific for Burgundy or Pinot noirs that are specifically designed for that particular wine varietal. Angela Aiello: And it’s very interesting too. I don’t know if you guys have a classroom glassware but the designations, you know, we don’t speak low hoop design glassware to sort of smell the right way depending on what type of grape it is so there can be a billion different types of glass right now, Rio has a over a hundred of glasses from whisky going all the way to other wines. So it’s very interesting and from my consumer perspective it’s a lot of fun to taste wine from different glasses. I mean if you have had a Burgundy out of this glass it’s going to smell and taste a lot different than if you would have a Burgundy out of this glass. So it’s a lot of testing and trials when it comes to wine and sort of learning your way around which brings us to the wine appreciation course that are offered here at a lot of LCBO within Ontario. So next time you're out and if you have this wine at home or this glass at home make sure you go out and try your wine from different glasses, when you go to eat make sure you have some nice glassware or dine somewhere that has nice glassware because it can make all the difference in your wine. Thanks so much Laura. Laura Ruffolo: Thank you. Angela Aiello: Cheers.