According to the current Rosengarten Report:
Honestly, I am not the type of wine drinker who chases down every trendy new idea in wine glasses, filling my cabinet with silly one-of fs that soon fall into dusty desuetude. So when I attended a luncheon in March touting the new Esperienze glass from glassmaker Luigi Bormioli in Parma, I was all ready to yawn. But the yawn soon turned into a gasp.
This line of glasses—which features 9 different glasses, as well as a decanter—is based on a strong principle that, at first, may sound like a fairy tale to you. Each glass is characterized by a series of deep, increasingly recessed, concentric circles where the wine gathers at the bottom of the “bowl.” The talking point is that this arrangement provokes the wine’s bouquet, so it’s not necessary to swirl the glass in order to smell the wine.
Who cares? I like swirling my glass. And I didn’t believe their contention, anyway.....before I tried it. But at the restaurant—and, again, in a much more controlled experiment at my office—damn me if what they said wasn’t exactly true! In glass after glass, the unswirled Esperienze glass had a much more pronounced bouquet than a regular glass of the same wine. But I still didn’t care much, because swirling’s not a major ef for t—until I discovered that when you swirl both glasses in the experiment, the Esperienze and the control, you still end up with much more aroma, more layers of aroma, in the Esperienze glass!
Then came the crusher—the taste. In most cases, the wine also tasted better out of the Esperienze glass! Often, the regular glass would reveal only, say, one specific note in the wine, like fruit in a Napa Valley Cabernet (I tried the absolutely extraordinary 2001 Magnificat from Franciscan Oakville Estate in my experiment)— but the Esperienze glass gave me a wine that tasted, as well as fruity, more earthy, more leather y, more chocolate-y, more of everything the winemaker wanted
me to taste.
Now, I’m not sure exactly how this works. And I haven’t experimented enough yet to understand the patterns of aroma/flavor
enhancement (so I can’t predict what each glass will do with different kinds of wine). And.....I have little faith in the suggested uses that Luigi Bormioli has given for each glass (the Pinot Noir/Amarone glass is especially suspect, because that pairing seems absurd). However, I’m letting you know fast, just as these glasses are being released—because you might want to start doing some experiments of your own!
BEST STRATEGY FOR ACQUISITION. The Esperienze glasses cost $29.99 for a gift-box set of four stems (not bad for glasses of this quality), and the decanter costs $29.99. The Esperienze glasses and decanter will be available at department stores and specialty stores across the country. For specific information regarding their availability, contact a representative of Luigi Bormioli via phone at 866.846.5700, or e-mail the sales department at sales@luigibormioli.com.