Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/148134
FROM THE EDITOR Vessel Vacillation Styles change and trends are always in motion. This is especially true in matters of wine—sangria to Blue Nun to white Zin to sangria, Merlot to Pinot, "Chablis" to Chardonnay. You get the idea. PHOTO: CATHY TWIGG-BLUMEL This carries over from what we drink to how we drink it. One of the most interesting of these transitions has been in the way we drink sparkling wine. When the bubbly made its debut in polite society it was consumed from the "coupe" glass, a vessel reputedly modeled after a particular intimate part of Marie Antoinette's anatomy. This glass was the standard for decades (look for them in The Great Gatsby movie; it will keep you awake). Clearly, the large exposed surface area encouraged the rapid escape of carbonation, which rendered the wine flat in short order. It was even the style in the 1920s for ladies to use swizzle sticks to remove the bubbles from their champagne because the effervescence tickled their delicate noses. Saner heads prevailed, however. The irony of intentionally removing the bubbles from a wine that cost more because of the expense of putting them in began to dawn on people. Enter the flute. The graceful, tall glass with the narrow top opening, became the norm (along with its sister glass, the tulip). It seemed, for a while, that the matter had been settled. But rumblings—mainly from France itself—are moving the needle once again. Recent visits to our shores by a number of champagne producers has demonstrated this fact. "The flute loses the bouquet entirely," one major champagne master informed me. "The glass needs to be wider and deeper so that the bubbles are contained and the aroma is concentrated in the glass." It turns out we're talking about a normal white wine glass, something that has been in the cabinet all along. Progress. So, use your coupes for ice cream, your flutes as vases, make your toasts in white wine glasses . . . and await further developments. 4 / the tasting panel / august 2013 TP0813_001-33.indd 4 7/24/13 9:45 PM