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Choosing a wine is difficult, but there are at least lots of guides and advisory websites or books out there to help. Choosing the right wine glasses to go with your wine sometimes seems much harder!The right receptacle brings out all the right stuff in the right wine. A good wine should be appreciated for its looks, its smell, and its flavour and so should be appreciated by the eyes and nose as well as the mouth.
In a bistro or bar, the only choice you’re likely to be offered is “large or small”?  It was Professor Claus J. Riedel (as in the famous glassmaker) who was the first glass designer to realise that wines are affected by the shape and size of the wine glasses from which they are drunk.That shape will magnify the intensity of aroma for different wines or direct wine to specific parts of the tongue.Some shapes and sizes will enhance fruitiness and others tannin. Certain shapes will keep Champagne from going flat.
Whatever wine glasses you choose, avoid the contemporary cone-shaped variety.It’s impossible to swirl the wine and the wide rim does nothing for appreciating the bouquet. There are those who claim that lead crystal glasses are the only way to appreciate the aroma, colour and taste of a fine wine.Lead crystal wines glasses are beautiful, but can be expensive (unless you get them cheaper via the Internet for example) and if you can afford them, they are well worth the extra. 
So, do you really need dozens of different wine glasses and other specialist glasses such sherry glasses to be socially acceptable?Of course not!The four basic shapes that are good to have in any serious wine drinker’s cupboard:
1. White wine glasses should have a wide bowl and narrow rim.
2. Decent all-purpose red wine glasses should be shorter and wider than the white wine glass to allow better swirling and more surface area for maximum air contact – especially good for well-aged red wines.
3. Off-dry to sweet wines (like Piesporter, Liebfraumilch, Riesling, etc) should be served in glasses with a slightly flared rim. This shape guides the wine to the “sweetness” area of the palate directly.
4. The classic champagne flute is the best style for sparkling wines as the long, narrow body concentrates the bubbles, intensifying the aroma and taste.

It is a popular belief that the glass you use to serve a fine wine is almost as important to how much you enjoy the drink as the wine itself. The shape, colour and fabric of wine glasses are all supposed to influence the way you appreciate the flavour and aroma of a wine. Whether there is really any truth to this or not remains to be seen but there are actually some convincing arguments that a wine really does taste better if drunk from the right glass.

So how do we know which glasses we should be using? With thousands of different shapes and sizes out there it’s hard to know which ones will be the best. Most people agree that a specially shaped glass is required for some types of wine. The most obvious example of this is tall, thin champagne flutes which are designed to retain the ‘fizziness’ in sparkling wines by reducing the surface area at the top of the glass. A serious wine buff will also use different glasses for red and white wines – a rounder, wider bowl for reds to allow more space for the wine to breathe, and a slightly smaller, tulip-shaped bowl to help keep whites cool.

But some people take this theory a lot further. Real wine geeks say that the difference between wines means a lot more than just the colour, and that for each different variety of wine there is a glass designed specifically to enhance the experience of drinking it. No one has pursued this further than the Austrian wine glass manufacturer Riedel, the company that first came up with the idea. They actually produce different glasses not only for different types of wine, but also for different varieties and vintages within each type – although not many people could afford to collect the whole set!

As for what the glass is made out of, lots of people think that a fine wine tastes better if drunk from a crystal glass. This is not strictly true – although using a lead crystal glass is generally considered to be more enjoyable. It’s actually more about the aroma than the flavour, the majority of what we ‘taste’ when we drink wine is in fact a combination of its smell and the effect of the evaporated aromas in the mouth. Crystal wine glasses, due to their heightened lead content (for a glass to count as ‘Crystal’ in Europe it has to contain at least 24% lead) have a slightly rougher surface than glass, which helps to release the aroma better by causing friction as the wine moves inside the glass.

Other than this, the differences are almost entirely aesthetic. A lead crystal glass is clearer so you can see the wine better, allowing serious tasters to examine its ‘legs’ more easily. It’s also a lot heavier than glass – again because of the high lead content – not to mention it’s more sparkly and makes that nice ringing sound when you tap it – science aside, crystal glasses are just generally more satisfying to drink from!

Choosing a wine is hard enough, but there are at least lots of guides and advisory websites or books out there to help.  Choosing the right wine glasses to go with your wine sometimes seems much harder!The correct glass brings out all the right stuff in the right wine. A good wine should be appreciated for its looks, its smell, and its flavour which means the eyes and nose as well as the mouth.
f you drink in a bistro or bar, the only choice you’ve usually got is “large or small”?Professor Claus J. Riedel (as in the famous glassmaker) who was the first glass designer to realise that the bouquet, taste, and finish of wines are affected by the shape and size of the wine glasses from which they are drunk.That shape will determine the depth of the aroma for different wines or direct wine to specific parts of the tongue.Some shapes and sizes will emphasise fruitiness while others will enhance tannin. Certain shapes will keep Champagne from going flat.
Whatever wine glasses you choose, avoid the contemporary cone-shaped variety.It’s impossible to swirl the wine and the wide rim is just wrong for appreciating the bouquet. There are those who claim fine lead crystal wine glasses are the only way to appreciate the aroma, colour and taste of a fine wine.Lead crystal wines glasses are beautiful, but can be expensive (unless you get them cheaper via an Internet retailer) and if you can afford them, they are well worth the extra. 
So, do you really need dozens of different wine glasses to be socially acceptable?No, not unless you want to!However, there are four basic shapes that are good to have in any serious wine drinker’s cupboard:
1.White wine glasses should have a wide bowl and narrow rim.
2.Decent all-purpose red wine glasses should be shorter and wider than the white wine glass to allow better swirling and more surface area for maximum air contact – especially good for well-aged red wines.
3.Off-dry to sweet wines (like Piesporter) should be served in wine glasses with a slightly flared rim. This shape guides the wine to the “sweetness” area of the palate much more quickly.
4.    The classic champagne flute is the best style for sparkling wines as the long, narrow body concentrates the bubbles in a small surface area, intensifying the aroma and taste.