You need to understand I am a person who has sipped more than his share of wine from a rough, dishwasher-scratched Duralex ("Made in France") glass, a glass with all the elegance of a Mason jar. I own fancy stemware for serious tastings, but cleaning it is a bother and expensive, given the burliness of my forearm and the delicate structure of the glass stem, snap. The Duralex, which I first experienced in a Brasserie in a town somewhere in France when I was tres younger than I am now, had its own special cachet and seemed adequate for most of my normal consumption at dinner. It was easy to hold, nearly unbreakable, fit easily in the dishwasher, stacked easily for storage and most importantly, did an excellent job of keeping the wine up off the table top.

You can imagine my reaction when someone told me that the latest of hip wine practice is for patrons to bring their own stemware in a foam fitted case to restaurants, the better to enjoy their wine selections. It was like someone reached up and flipped my boggle switch. I could not believe it.

Then I went to a tasting at a friend's house where wines were served from the same bottle during dinner, right in front of my eyes, one glass in a restaurant clunker (although not Duralex, something that would stand up to lots of abuse) and the other serving in a Reidel glass, thin and very well formed for that particular type of wine. So, you had your Chardonnay glass and your pinot noir glass and your zinfandel glass all lined up, each shaped differently.

And I was so ready to expose this hoax.

I was prepared to focus all the arrows in my not insignificant quiver on the smells and flavors in those two different glasses, and I did, and you know what? They were right. The wine showed significantly better in the expensive stemware; it had better aroma, looked nicer and, as I was told later, because the shape caused the wine to spill onto the part of your tongue where its predominant flavor would be most perceptive, tasted a whole lot better. Same wine, different level of glass.

In the same way you can take a snapshot out of that messy pile you and I both know you have in a drawer somewhere in your house and spend a few dollars on a nice frame and instantly transform that picture into a photograph, worthy of placing on your fireplace mantle, so can you frame a wine in a way that draws attention to its uniqueness and most attractive features by spending some money on a special glass.

Paul Kreider