How to Choose the Right Burgundy Wine Glass

Learn How The Proper Burgundy Wine Glass Enhances The Experience

Quick Read: Choosing the Right Burgundy Wine Glass 

• The size and shape of your wine glass (and what it’s made of) impact significantly on how you experience wine, by changing the amount of air the wine mixes with, and how it enters your mouth
• For sparkling wine choose tall, slim glasses (take care not to use a glass too narrow, as it may stop aromas from getting to your nose)
• For white Burgundy wines, we recommend a steep-sided glass with a fairly open bowl and a narrow rim
• When drinking red wines, try to use a glass that is large and broad – this will help you appreciate the aromas and flavors especially if the wine is from a grape capable of complex flavors, like Pinot Noir
• The rim (or lip) of the glass can alter how the wine enters your mouth – if you find wine is acidic or tart on your palate, try a different or smaller rim size
• Consider other factors too such as what glass it is made from (crystal, leaded, unleaded), and whether it is safe to be put in the dishwasher
• Elden Selections have chosen two perfect wine glass styles to enjoy Burgundy wines in – as used at Domaine de Cromey. Read on for more details!

When we think about which wines we want to drink, we spend a lot of time considering their color, taste and character – but probably not nearly as much time as we should in thinking about the glass we want to drink them from. It might seem like a minor thing to spend time over, but in fact a wine glass can significantly alter the aroma and taste of a wine, and our overall enjoyment of it. In this article, we’re going to look at the science behind how that happens, and give some examples of the sorts of glasses we use here at Elden Selections at the Domaine de Cromey, our home in Burgundy.

How Wine Glasses Help You Appreciate Burgundy Wines 

Let’s look at the anatomy of a wine glass first of all. We’re all familiar with them and their constituent parts; there’s the base, the stem, the bowl and the lip of the glass. Each of these elements in turn affects your appreciation of the wine you’re drinking in a different way. With wines like those that come from Burgundy, this is especially important, because they are usually wines of great complexity, with many nuances of taste and aroma, which means that small changes to the way you consume them can make big differences. A good glass gives your favorite wine the time and space it needs to tell its story properly. 

All this focus on glasses is to enable the maximum enjoyment from every sip you take, with your eye, nose and mouth. To do this, make sure you arm yourself with the right sort of glass! If not, you risk never quite getting the full potential from those Burgundy wines you put so much time into choosing. 

Burgundy wines are complex beasts, as you probably know by now. It goes with the territory – or rather, the terroir! The landscape of Burgundy is a complicated picture as it involves multi-layered geographical features like rock, gravel and clay, as well as the famous soil. Wines from this region need time to breathe, and that action of combining wine with oxygen is a crucial part of the tasting process. Known as aeration, it allows the aromas to make themselves known, and is a vital precursor to what you will experience when it comes to taste. It happens in the bowl of the glass, and that’s why Burgundy wine glasses are famous for their wider bowls, so that this mixing of wine and air can happen to its full extent. 

Next let’s think about the edge of the glass where it meets your mouth, known as the lip of the glass. For wines which are quite complex, a fairly fine lip works particularly well, because it feels comfortable on the mouth, and lets the wine pass into your mouth unimpeded. In this way, a great glass can really direct the way the wine flows into and onto your palate.

The stem, of course, can help in another way – for a white or sparkling wine glass, you don’t really want to be holding it by the bowl of the glass, because it will warm the wine too much, so use the stem to grasp it. It can also add elegance and design to the glass too.

Here at Elden Selections we went on a journey of our own to seek out the optimal style and quality of glass required for our best white, sparkling and red wines. Here are what we recommend you look out for in a glass when drinking your Burgundy wine. We use these at home in Domaine de Cromey, and we would love to have you as our guests here to try them in person. (If you’re interested in being our next guests, you can read more about Cromey here.)

The Perfect Burgundy White Wine Glass 

The glass we use and that we recommend is one that is made of Kwarx crystal and has an elongated bowl with a rim that has a slight taper (less than 1mm thick). In this way it enhances your tasting experience hugely, because it directs the wine to your nose and mouth at exactly the right time and speed. It means faster oxygenation and a larger development of flavors – particularly crucial for those robust, meaty, chocolatey red wines that you find so often in Burgundy cellars. It’s based on a universal style of design which has been around for a while, and which can be used for a wide variety of wines. 

The Perfect Burgundy Red Wine Glass 

Based on a more universal style of design, which pairs perfectly with a wide variety of wines, this glass is great for your red Burgundys, but it can be used for white wines too. Fashioned from finest Kwarx crystal glass, we love the elongated bowl and the slight taper of the rim (less than 1mm thick). This ensures the wines reach your mouth and nose at just the right time to really transport your tasting experience to the next level. You’ll notice it straight away, as the shape has been designed to provide faster oxygenation to your wines, and a bigger flavor development – crucial for those meaty, leathery, chocolatey reds that Burgundy does so well.  

Wine Glasses for Sparkling Burgundy Wine 

Things are a little different when it comes to sparkling wines, like a good Cremant de Bourgogne. These wines demand a glass that is somewhat smaller and narrower, such as the flute glass. The reason is that this design prevents the bubbles formed in carbonation from bursting too quickly. The shape concentrates the wine’s fruity flavors through its narrower mouth, and allows them to remain effervescent for longer (though we must be careful not to go too narrow, and not let the aroma escape enough). A further plus point with this type of glass is that it makes the wine look so much better, when you can see those elegant flows of bubbles from the bottom of the glass to its top, pleasingly trailing upwards towards your mouth.

How to Take Care of Your Burgundy Wine Glasses

In an ideal world, we would all hand-wash our wine glasses and then give them a good polish with a cloth made from 100% cotton… but we’re well aware that we don’t always live in an ideal world, as much as we would love to. For many of us, modern life requires somewhat more modern solutions! That’s why we recommend glasses that can withstand your dishwasher. Just remember to do the ‘sniff test’ after you’ve taken them out of the washer, check for any water deposits/pools, and polish any blemishes off. 

Your wine glass should be as beautiful and satisfying as the wine it holds within. The correct Burgundy wine glass is curvaceous, designed with ergonomics in mind, has gracious lines and will look great both in your hand and on your table. 

Our blog on BurgundyWine.com contains more articles about wines from this part of the world, including on such famous names as Pouilly-Fuisse. There are also articles on our Domaine de Cromey blog site, where you can discover appellations such as Auxey-Duresses. And why not become our newest member of our Burgundy Wine Club?