Glassware

Wine and glass have shared a long and happy history together, with glasses coming in all shapes and sizes, to match the mood and the wine.

Glassmaking began in Mesopotamia (modern- day Iraq), with the first objects most likely being glass beads. It was some time before the art of crafting glass into drinking or decorative vessels evolved—and even then it was a luxury item. It was much less expensive to throw clay on a potter’s wheel and create amphorae or drinking cups. While wine glasses were used by the wealthy classes, the common folk drank out of drinking cups fashioned from leather, wood or a base metal such as lead. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, migrating tribes were prone to consume beer and wine from horns, which had the disadvantage of lacking a base—requiring the beverage to be consumed in a single draft. (To be fair, these tribes also fashioned goblets from precious metals.)

By the 12th century, the Venetian Republic became recognized as the pre-eminent glassmakers of Europe. They remained as such until the 16th century, when a French glassmaker moved to the south of England and, with a crew of Venetian craftsmen, developed glass that was called “cristallo”. By the late 17th century, lead oxide was incorporated into the production of glass, creating what we would now describe as lead crystal. Over the next two hundred years, glass-making underwent huge transformations in the design and weight of crystal.

The first thing to catch the eye when you see a piece of antique stemware in a museum is the size of the glass. (You might have noted the size of wine glasses in the currently popular historical dramas.) Compared to stemware in fashion today, there is a huge difference in size. In many cases, the chamber of a modern glass would have enough volume to take a full bottle of wine. This increased size is by design: the chamber allows the wine to open up in accordance to the properties of the grape varietal. Other glasses are designed to deliver the wine to the mouth at an optimum angle.

Those who have attended wine tastings such as Terroir or Taste are most likely familiar with the ISO glass used in these events. The International Organization for Standardization has approved this exact glass to allow one to the nose the wine in the chamber prior to tasting the wine itself.