Is there a proper way to clean my expensive wine glasses?

By / Magazine / November 1st, 2016 / 1

Is there a proper way to clean my expensive wine glasses?

It doesn’t matter if you’re drinking from pricy stemware or not, tending to your receptacles doesn’t stop once you’ve downed your last drop of vino (or beer or spirits for that matter) and safely transported your glass back to the kitchen. As you might imagine, I’ve got more glass than a Venetian factory. My collection includes everything from fancy-pants Riedel glasses, designed in Austria to enhance specific grape varieties all the way, way down to a collection of Michael Keaton–themed Batman tumblers I collected from Ultramar gas stations back in 1989.

I’m a firm believer that while a wine will reveal much more of itself when provided the appropriate glass, sometimes you’ve just got to break out Batman to take the pretension out of what you’re pouring.

But back to your cleaning question.

You may be surprised to find out that most glassware can hit the dishwasher and come out the other end just fine. Even knowing that’s true, I always reserve one tray for my babies to inhabit alone so they’re the only ones together during the wash cycle. My thought is that like-minded glasses will respect each other’s space and that will help the team survive the journey. It’s worked for me so far.

If you’re one of those anal-retentive types (or you’ve got really pricey glasses), doing it by hand is your only option.

The washing part is easy. All you need is some warm water, a little delicate detergent and a place to place them to catch the excess H2O runoff. I have a relatively cheap cloth-wrapped foam drying mat I picked up at a kitchen-themed bric-a-brac store that does the trick just fine.

Once the water has run its course off the glass, grab a couple of microfibre tea towels and prepare for the rubdown. This is not the time to channel your inner Arnold Schwarzenegger. With a towel in both hands, gently start at the base of the glass and work your way up the stem. Stay in the comfort zone when you reach the bowl and lightly massage the out- and in-sides until everything is bright and shiny.

Want your stemware to look just-bought-ready when you serve? I love the tip provided by Maximilian Riedel, the face of the famous glassware maker, on YouTube. Just boil some water in a kettle and let some of its flowing steam roll into the bowl. When you’ve polished out the condensation, they’ll look like new.

What’s fair trade, and what does it have to do with wine?

Sorry to rain on your parade, but all is not fair in love and wine. While I’m no expert in activism or the social sciences, at its roots the fair trade movement is all about helping developing countries get equal treatment and appropriate pricing for their goods from people like us here in the developed world.

You’re probably more familiar with the term being associated with coffee, since more than half of all the beans brewed come from small producers in Africa and Latin America. Easily taken advantage of, fair trade advocates, which include many of your favourite purveyors of the dark stuff, support these little guys by providing them with a “fair” return for their output.

Wine is another commodity produced in developing nations — like South Africa and South America — often from grapes grown by independent farmers. Like their compatriots in the coffee business, many wineries buying those grapes in their respective countries support their sources through fair trade initiatives.

If you’re concerned a fair trade wine may drink differently than a non-fair trade wine, don’t worry, that taste in your mouth is all good and fair.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fresh, funny and down-to-earth, Peter Rockwell is the everyman's wine writer. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia he's worked in the liquor industry for over 30 years and has written about wine, spirits & beer since graduating from the School of Journalism at the University of King's College in 1986. His reviews and feature articles have been published in Tidings, Vines, Occasions, Where and on Alliant.net to name a few; he has been a weekly on-air wine feature columnist for both CBC-TV and Global Television and his wine column 'Liquid Assets' appeared weekly in two of Nova Scotia's daily newspapers, 'The Halifax Daily News' and 'The Cape Breton Post.' Today Peter's irreverent answer man column 'Bon Vivant' appears each month in Tidings Magazine and his weekly 'Liquid Assets' column is published across Canada in editions of the METRO newspaper. When not drinking at home, and at work, Peter travels the globe looking for something to fill his glass and put into words.

Comments are closed.

North America’s Longest Running Food & Wine Magazine

Get Quench-ed!!!

Champion storytellers & proudly independent for over 50 years. Free Weekly newsletter & full digital access