Tiny glasses won't cut it.

I watch a lot of HGTV and the women on it, probably a good 65% I'd say, often talk about in designing the house about being able to relax to a good glass of wine in various rooms as part of the appeal.

None of my significant others were drinkers at home, just socially when going out, and my mother didn't drink since my father was an alcoholic. It's something that you pick up on because it seems so unusual.

Without women, the wine industry in this country would completely collapse.

Ok, I do like a good cabernet and i'll keep a few whites around for those who don't and occasional sparkling wine/champers. So, that's three glasses and I suppose I have a few cordial glasses, beer and spirit glasses as well. But, lately I've seen households where they have no less than 20 different styled wine/beer/spirit glasses and probably more GEEBUS.

Now, I see that you are supposed to pay $300 for some device that lets you pour out of the wine bottle without actually removing the cork so that your wine tastes the same on each glass.


Easy to see why some people get crazed on all this and end up imbibing waaaaay too much.

big glasses does not mean the restaurant is giving you more wine in fact they are giving you less. Half the glass is empty.

I really don't think 20-30 different glasses is necessary to "serve in proper glasses"

and serve each type in the proper glass, you would need at least 6-7 on the conservative end. Meaning, I'm not even getting really fancy. A pilsner just shouldn't be served in the same glass as a stout. Nope. I gotta imagine wine is even more delicate/picky/whatever.

If you want 30 types of pilsner glasses, so be it. I think that is f'ing ridiculous.

Pilsner glass, goblet, chalice, etc. You need at least 6-7 different types of glasses if you drink different types of beer.

You again missed the point. I never said you shouldn't have different glasses for different wine, spirits, beer, but that it had gotten totally out of hand.

I indicated that if you need that many for beer, wine is probably more delicate/picky/whatever.

drinking out of mason jars is fine with me
but a restaurant should show it if it wants to be considered "fine dining"

drink out of the milk carton if you want
I like a chilled mug for my beer

drink from what you want
it is no big deal
if you are a restaurant owner you should have all the glasses is all I said
yes that is a lot of glasses
I'm sure your friends don't mind drinking from A&W mugs, Steak and Shake glasses and Mason jars
My wife made me get real glasses when we were dating, she thought old jelly jars was cheap

and some other central European countries to see establishments sell each different brand - let alone type - of beer in its own special glass. At home, I have one set of matched wine glasses that I've managed not to break over the years which I use for small dinner parties for whatever wine I'm serving (and non-imbibers are free to use them for other beverages. After all, they'll have to eat their bouillon with a regular soup spoon and their fish with a non-specialized knife and fork). For larger parties, the guests just have to put up with whatever mismatched glassware is available, most of which has the logo of some event or winery.

IMHO, as someone who drinks a lot of wine, the effects of what a glass is like on what's in it is minimal: I think it's based more on tradition than taste - at least I've never seen any results of blindfolded tastings. I also think it's a form of conspicuous consumption: "Look at me! I can afford a special glass/plate/utensil for each different item! And the room to store them!".

Merely noting that the wine glasses are larger without looking at why they were small then or why they are larger now misses at least a couple of important things.

Love it! Thank you!

Glass was EXPENSIVE. Most wine was actually consumed using different kinds of drinking vessels. During the middle ages, a type of drinking bowl, called a mazer was often used. These were LARGE.



Later in the Middle Ages, drinking beakers (which resemble a modern tumbler). These would be made of glass, or stoneware, but were usually made of pewter. Pricey ones were made of silver.



We have to think beyond the immediate issue.... people used to drink wine a LOT. I mean a LOT. THough it was often mixed with water. The alcohol was important to make the water less deadly.

We tend to restrict drinking to certain specific times (giving rise to the expression "It's five o'clock somewhere!" for those who want a drink before the whistle blows).

In the 18th Century, the Era Of Small Wine Glasses, people used to drink pretty much around the clock.

John Hancock is known to have consumed an entire bowl of rum punch even before getting out of bed in the mornings.

The tales of the amount of booze consumed at the Constitutional Convention after-party are legendary...

It was a way of avoiding illness and death from contaminated drinking water, but still...

In the early 1900's developed a automatic glass making process that produced 240 glass containers an hour, with a 80% gain in production cost. Owens-Illinois, Owens-Corning, Libbey-Owens-Ford and Libbey Glass were all headquartered in Toledo OH.

was an engineer in the glass industry for about thirty years.

Thanks for sharing.

in the early 19th century than today. We drink less today than in 1980.

Here is a statistic but it doesn't go back before 1850.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/442818/per-capita-alcohol-consumption-of-all-beverages-in-the-us/


Here is a quote from a BBC report

n 1830, consumption peaked at 7.1 gallons a year and drinking became a moral issue.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31741615

Americans drinking habits throughout the post Revolutionary War to the Civil War. Evidently, we drank ale a lot. Why? Before industrialization work was back breaking labor and American men took to drinking lots of ale to self medicate.

Then, we stopped mid century when the temperance movement campaigned in communities all over the settled country to halt drinking. Why? It was, according to the author, dangerous and often deadly to have people in the newly opened industries to work drunk. Workers often fell into the machines they were operating because they were too drunk to operate machinery.

Oh, and we cultivated corn crops in that era. We had plenty of corn, so making whisky was easy and cheap. That didn't help keep us sober.

I found that book interesting.

into the past -- in the 40's and 50's, plates were about 25% smaller than plates are now. It encourages overeating.

has a wider rim on all the plates and therefore much less room for food. The actual diameter of the fine china dinner plates is only fractionally less than my contemporary/modern plates. It's the very wide rim that makes such a difference.

which can take a whole bottle of wine. Now, there was a time when I was a student when that would have been an evening's drinking, but still - to commit to that in one go seems a bit excessive.

Or you can just drink it straight from the bottle ...

Making refrigerator rolls (homemade fresh rolls, little rise time needed) and my french chicken in a pot, and had a glass. Drank two more glasses over a multi-course dinner. Had a small glass after dinner in my living room listening to music. The last of the bottle was while taking a soaking warm bath. One bottle. 4-5 hours. Food, eight hours sleep. Perfectly fine at 7 am next morning.

But not something I would do every month.

As they were shit-faced drunk by 5:00pm from all the rum and gun they drank.

by Patrick O'Brien. Gallons of wine and port. Lots of toasts, and you emptied your glass for each toast. That on top of each sailor's daily portion of rum.

making numerous toasts to each other, the President (or their own party), or anything else that came to mind. In America alcohol consumption was far greater in the 18th and 19th centuries than it is today. In England only the wealthy drank wine, but they consumed it in copious quantities. Here's a sample from a historian, Regan-Lefebvre:

“I’ve seen one menu that begins with a sherry and some hors d’oeuvres and moves on to a white Burgundy with soup, then a red Bordeaux with the fish course, then two different Champagnes with light meat dishes, then two vintage red Bordeaux with lamb and roast poultry, then port with ice cream, and finally Champagne again to finish!”

https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/historian-explains-how-downton-abbey-got-drunk/

I have no intention to drink from it but I use it for change. It's a stemless wine glass found at a mainstream store that says 'This >^..^< grabs back"

I bought it because it was the first time I saw 'pussy grabs back' merchandise at a mainstream store.

"Breathing" since I bet most people don't decant.

But I still have some smaller glasses that I love that some might use for cordials.

really calls for different sizes and styles of glasses.

I don’t doubt they supersize them in part for the same reason we do everything but people also tend to be a bit more sophisticated (and think they’re a lot more) than they used to be. Wine likes oxygen and more surface area makes it “open” faster.

One of my sons has a degree and is in the industry.

About 2 inches at the bottom of that big glass.