Buy Large Wine Glasses
Big Wine Glasses aims to simplify and improve upon the wine glass buying experience. These days, people want a big wine glass to enhance their enjoyment of wine. They know that big wine glasses allow wines to open up more fully, releasing all the amazing layers and notes in the taste of a great wine. Home goods stores and old establishment wine glass makers have made the wine glass buying experience far more difficult than it needs to be. Most traditional brands and retailers focus on small, thick glasses sold in bulk. If the older brands and retailers even offer big wine glasses, those glasses often get lost in the clutter of confusing and overlapping choices. Why have a different wine glass for every wine varietal imaginable, or write a novel on the history of European wineries on the box? Can you even find the size of the glass written anywhere? The conventional approach did not make sense to us, and that is why we started Big Wine Glasses. Your focus is on simply finding the right glass to savor a quality wine with your friends and loved ones. We are here to provide it!Try one of our big wine glasses, and we promise you will never look back. Leave the rules and the old order of drinking wine behind. Every swirl of wine with one of our glasses is a step forward - toward a new awareness and a modern path for experiencing wine.
buy large wine glasses
When shopping for wine glasses, you may find some labeled as glass and others as crystal and wonder what the difference is. Even though seeing something labeled crystal glass used to mean it was made with lead, many brands nowadays offer lead-free crystal wine glasses. But the truth is that the main difference between crystal and glass is cost, according to our Executive Wine Editor, Ray Isle. "It doesn't matter in terms of tasting," he says.
Put a royal stamp of approval on any drinking occasion with our celebratory wine glasses. An elegant souvenir of His Majesty The King's royal home at Highgrove, each fine crystal glass is engraved by hand with the regal feathers logo.Embracing the royal principles of unique design and excellence, our engraved glassware is produced by a family-run British company, now in its third generation, and is used for royal events at Highgrove. Our large wine glass is perfect for red wine, giving it the space to breathe and release its heady aroma.
These crystal glasses are made in Austria by skilled craftsmen, and their signature curves offer a decanting effect. They can be used with red, white, sparkling and dessert wines, and the stemware is dishwasher-safe as well.
You can take your wine on the go with this 16-ounce tumbler from BrüMate. The insulated tumbler can hold up to half a bottle of wine, and it keeps your drink at the perfect temperature for hours. It has a leakproof lid for easy transport and comes in a wide range of colors and patterns. Plus, the brand offers a limited lifetime warranty on the product.
To find out what makes a great Champagne glass, we spoke to wine professionals, including Belinda Chang, former Champagne educator for Moët Hennessy; David Speer, the founder of Ambonnay in Portland, Oregon; and Philippe Gouze, the director of operations at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the world-renowned farm-to-table restaurant outside New York City. Additionally, we interviewed Maximilian Riedel, CEO of Riedel, to learn more about the history, development, and production of Riedel stemware.
Tammie Teclemariam, who worked on the 2019 update, is a freelance food and drinks writer and wine professional. Since 2011 she has worked in restaurants, wine distribution and retail, and completed a six-month viticulture and winemaking apprenticeship at Clos Centeilles in Minervois, France. She researched more than 50 glasses and tested 14.
For the sake of including some less expensive options, we did test some wine glasses made from soda-lime glass in addition to ones made from non-leaded crystal. Ultimately, we found elegant, thin-enough glasses made from both materials. (You can read more about the differences between types of glass later in this guide.)
We avoided wine glasses that were too short and stubby, because they lack elegance and are unattractive in comparison to glasses with longer, more classic stems. The stem also needs to be long enough to comfortably hold the glass without your hand touching the bowl, which could warm the wine and leave smudges. But we still wanted the glasses to be short enough to easily fit in a cupboard or the top rack of a dishwasher. In our testing, we found the ideal height of a wine glass is about 8 to 9 inches.
In our tests, the thinnest glasses generally did an excellent job highlighting the flavors and aromas of multiple wines, and most people found them handsome to look at. But in actual practice, many of our testers remarked that the thinnest stems were difficult to grip and felt poised to break during use. Even knowing that those thinner glasses are more durable than they appear (all remained intact in our drop tests), most people were nervous using them. Ultimately, the glasses we favored hit a nice middle ground: thin enough to feel elegant but thick enough to feel comfortable.
The overall weight is also important. A glass that feels almost weightless when empty can feel unbalanced when it is full of wine, while an excessively heavy glass is unpleasant to sip from and cumbersome to hold. We looked for options that struck a comfortable balance.
For our 2019 update, we tested our previous picks against eight new glasses in a blind tasting with Mary Taylor, a wine importer and distributor who has previously worked as a sommelier. After we eliminated all varietal and red- or white-specific glasses from our testing, we looked for the most versatile all-purpose glasses by tasting six vastly different wines in every glass, including $15-to-$20 reds and whites, a $10 red, aged wine, and natural wine.
We also polled a dozen members of Wirecutter staff on how they drink at home and asked them to taste wine from the glasses they were most attracted to, then to score the experience. We noted not only how wine smelled and tasted in each glass, but also how each glass felt to hold, swirl, and drink from. Between each round of tests, we washed all of the glasses in the dishwasher and polished them by hand using a microfiber cloth.
We found the Harmony to be more attractive than the more traditionally shaped Ravenscroft glass, our previous pick for stemless glassware. The angled edges of the Harmony made for a sturdier glass that was almost impossible to knock over during our drop tests (it often popped back upright like a punching clown). If you choose stemless glasses for parties or large dinners, the Rastal Harmony takes up less space on a table and packs more easily into the dishwasher. Other glasses we tested felt more regal than befits a stemless glass and ended up feeling too clunky.
We researched over 80 glasses and tested 10. Aside from comfort and overall aesthetics, we were mainly looking for glasses that excelled at preserving carbonation. The clear winner from our tests was the Riedel Vinum Cuvee Prestige. Its tulip shape walks the line between that of a tall flute and the more useful (aromatically speaking) bowl of a traditional wine glass, and has ample capacity to hold a generous pour of bubbly without overflowing. It also has a tiny imperceptible etching at the bottom of the bowl that allows the gas to escape in a steady flow from a single targeted place, keeping the wine carbonated for as long as possible. Considering the quality craftsmanship and materials, this flute is a bargain at about $25 per glass. Made from non-leaded crystal, the Cuvee Prestige sparkles brilliantly under the light.
Some glassware manufacturers, most notably Riedel, take the concept one step further and have glasses specially designed for many varietals such as chardonnay and riesling. If you have particular allegiance toward a certain grape variety and the cabinet space to store unitasking glassware, matching your wine to the perfect glass can be a fun and expensive hobby.
Light weight does not indicate a glass is more fragile. In our drop tests, the lightest glasses performed admirably, almost bouncing back after they fell, while the two that broke were some of the heaviest. At Pasquale Jones, a 55-seat restaurant in Manhattan, they exclusively use thin, lightweight Zalto universal glasses for all of their service. The 150 to 200 glasses in use on any given day are washed in a high-speed bar glass dishwasher with a rack modified to fit the fine stemware before being dried and checked for lint by their polisher. Hannah Harris, a manager and sommelier there, says they only break one or two glasses a night, a normal amount for any busy restaurant of that size.
Although it may seem counterintuitive with delicate stemware, we recommend cleaning wine glasses in the dishwasher. In fact, some high-end wine glasses specify not just that they are dishwasher safe, but that machine washing is preferred. This is because the biggest risk for breaking comes during handwashing, where a glass can slip and hit the sink or snap if you twist the bowl and stem in opposite directions. But if you must handwash glasses, we recommend cleaning delicate stemware with hot water, a bottle brush, and a little bit of dish soap.
To remove water spots and smudges, or to get your glassware really sparkly, we recommend hand polishing it using a microfiber polishing cloth. If there are hard-to-remove stains on the glass, try using a little white vinegar (just be sure to wash the glass after). Never polish your glass by holding the base in one hand and twisting the polishing cloth around the rim of the bowl at the top, which could torque and snap thinner stems. Instead, hold the glass by the bowl while polishing to avoid twisting it apart. Check out this Riedel video for the proper polishing technique. Also, never use linen softener when cleaning your polishing cloth, as this could leave a greasy residue on the surface of your wine glasses. 041b061a72