Calvin Klein Hampshire Red Wine Glasses
One of the questions I get year round is, "What wine glasses should I be using?"
It's a pretty damn valid question considering how many damn glass options there are. There's big bowled Pinot glasses and slightly tuliped Bordeaux glasses and Champagne flutes and coupes and then just like, a white wine glass? Is that what it is? No one knows. It just looks like a god damn wine glass.
Different glasses are made for different wines to accentuate their bouquets and give them room to breathe and open up. Of course, in a dream world, I would have a set of each type of wine glass for each type of wine, and I would be an extremely impressive human that no one would ever suspect spent the early portion of her twenties drinking Charles Shaw out of red Solo cups.
I've tried playing the multiple glass set game, and it is a costly one. Not only do you have your initial investment of multiple sets of wine glasses, but up-keeping these sets becomes obnoxious. I thought that my late twenties would usher in a time where friends, family and myself were more cautious with wine glasses but the truth is, shit happens and your wine glasses are going to break no matter what. Just this past week I snapped a stem while getting one off the rack and I was sober. So then, you're stuck with like, three Chardonnay glasses, five Cabernet glasses and one random Sauterine glass that you didn't know was for Sauterine but doesn't matter now because they're all fucking broken.
But go to any tasting and look at what you're drinking out of. Whether it's red, white or sparkling, you're probably drinking all three out of a standard red or white glass. The red standard glass is a touch rounder than the standard white, but seriously it doesn't matter. They're standard-ass wine glasses you an put whatever you want in.
My advice to wine drinkers is to have a standard, stemmed, glass set that you can service everything in that is easily replaceable. I specifically say stemmed because as much as I like tumblers for red wine, they are terrible for white wine. You don't want to be heating up that icy Riesling with those sweaty little palms of yours!
If you want to get a little fancy, you can do what I do and have two versatile, standard glass sets. I have one that is for every day drinking, and one that I save for special occasions and holidays, like these Calvin Klein Hampshire glasses.
I love the lead-free crystal CK Hampshire wine glasses because they are beautiful and exemplify my love of mid-century stylings more than my everyday glass-glasses I let my guests break in my bushes all summer. They remind me of Slim Aarons' Palm Springs, Eames chairs and Case Study houses. These glasses make me want to sashay through The Kaufman House in a vintage Dior gown, run my fingers along the backside of the body of a black grand piano listening to Nina Simone and Les Baxter, and graciously accept yet another Jello mold.
Mid-Century Bonus: Getting to feel like a housewife cleaning crystal glasses by hand!
JK I wash all my glasses by hand because I'm an insane person who also has polishing gloves.
When it comes to wine, the wine matters much more than what its served in. Your guests seriously don't care. And if they do, they're assholes who you shouldn't have over to drink wine with you anyway, so fuck them. And definitely don't let them near your fancy Calvin Klein crystal. They don't deserve to feel like they're in a Julius Schulman lifestyle shot.
So buy what you like and use them for everything. Even if they're gnarly goblets or some shit. Whatever. Just drink wine and be merry. Everything else will fall into place.
