With only one “official” wine tasting session under my belt, I was terrified to attend the Riedel “master class” that would surely be full of wine savvy people. After my previous experience at the Hilton Wine Apprentice evening, I wasn’t looking forward to sharing my “lack of” opinions to a room full of disapproving eyes.

Once I arrived I was relieved to see over 100 seats around tables arranged in rows of 5.  My chances of being “picked on” were really miniscule!  *sigh of relief* 

The master himself, Georg Riedel began his presentation and was really sincere and humorous. I quietly sang inside for joy when he said, “Today, you will learn about the glass, not the wine. I want you to forget about the wine – don’t guess what the wine is that we are giving you – that is why I have asked for the wine to only be numbered. You do not need to know the name and vintage of the wine. What you need to know is how the glass you will drink from affects the taste.”

Mr. Riedel invited us to open our bottles of water and pour a little into each glass. “Okay everyone, there is no need to swirl the water around – I promise you, water has no smell.”  Everyone laughed as Mr. Riedel explained how the shape of the glasses changed the way the water filled our mouths and “activated” different parts of the mouth based on the flow.  Conceptually this seemed weird.  But with each try I most definitely felt something different when we drank from a different glass.  In the end I think I “got” what he was saying. 

After the water flight, we tasted three different wines in turn in three specialized glasses: the Syrah, Bordeaux Grand Cru, and Burgundy Grand Cru glasses.  Now the tough stuff began.  

Georg asked us to first evaluate each wine in a plastic cup, then pour a bit into each glass to taste. I struggled with identifying the aromas, but I could easily note how the glass shapes made the smell of the wine stronger or weaker. When it came to tasting, again, I couldn’t identify specific tastes (or describe the palate as everyone kept saying) but certainly the wine tasted different from the different glasses. What an interesting revelation!

Chocolate was the next thing on the agenda – we were to learn how to pair a wine with food. We were instructed to unwrap a piece of chocolate, chew it up a little and with the chocolate still in our mouths take a sip of the wine and “roll it around.”  It felt really strange. All my life, my mother has told me to swallow my food before drinking anything!   This was interesting but weird for me – it will take some practice for me to become a “food pairing” expert.

What I did learn from this exercise was that the same wine, drunk from a different glass, changed the taste of the chocolate. It was almost as if someone switched my glasses and gave me a completely different drink.

Finally, Georg touched on decanting by showing us some fancy decanters.  I thought it was cool that he didn’t spill a single drop, but since I didn’t get to taste the decanted wine, I have to believe that it was “aired” as he said.

To wrap up the lesson, Georg reminded us that selecting glassware is not about how expensive the glass is but rather is about which glass is better suited to the wine. That is really true.  I remembered that one of the wines tasted better from the plastic cup than from the Syrah glass!  Georg agreed on that too – so he was right. 

All this information about glassware is really good to know – but I have a lot more to learn about wines! I guess I still have a looong way to go!!