Yesterday, I wrote about our Wine Century Club (Windsor, California chapter) tasting.

Not only did we have great wines to taste, but I also brought along a Ravenscroft glass to try with the wines.

I’ve been through a Riedel tasting, and even orchestrated an Eisch Glass production for a Petite Sirah glass. This involved 12 winemakers, plus myself and Paul Manchester (a long-time industry pro), who was selling and marketing Eisch at the time. After these two experiences, I’m a big believer in wine glasses of any sort that have their own way of delivering aromas and flavors to your palate. I don’t need to be convinced that specialty wine glasses are a benefit to the overall wine tasting experience.

Since I only had one Ravenscroft glass to try, I knew we could just share. I don’t worry about spreading germs, because wine is antimicrobial… Germs simply don’t survive in wine. There have been times in history when water was so polluted that people – including children – had to lay off the water and drink the wine.

The Ravenscroft glass was a featured guest of the evening, because I had received a sample glass to try from Tom McHenry. I thought it would be fun to share, rather than just give it a try by myself.

Have you ever switched from glass to glass with the same wine in each?

It’s pretty amazing. Get ready for your palate to taste in as many different ways as the number you have of different glasses.

What we learned about the Ravenscroft “Invisible” glass:

• According to Ravenscroft, “‘The world’s most famous enologist [unnamed] once said, ‘A wine glass should be invisible.’  In this spirit, Ravenscroft Crystal has produced the most transparent, lightweight wine glasses possible.” We could actually see it, but we all did love the weight of this glass. It’s very light weight.
• The two women (Sondra and I) both got less aromatics from the glass with the white wines, the guys (Jim Caudill and Jose) got more aromas when doing the nose of the whites.
• The red wines had us all getting more aromatics. Hum…
• With each wine, we tasted through, trying each glass with the same wine in each glass; each one delivered something new and different in flavors. We were astounded, because we didn’t think it would be that drastically different.

So, how do I feel about Ravenscroft?

• It is a wonderful wine glass, that’s very lightweight (but, we could see it, even though it’s called invisible… wink).
• I enjoyed tasting wine from the glass, as it delivers delicious flavors.
• I would buy them, because I was very impressed with how light weight they are… I’d rather get carpal tunnel from my wine, not my glass.

And then, if that wasn’t enough going on this time, we even played Sondra’s Rorschach game as we tasted… We matched the flavors of the wines to the microscopic images that are in her Wine’s Hidden Beauty Book. We had a lot going on, and not a moment of dead air…Sondra even asked what kind of people we must all be, considering all that we were doing.

That’s why I”m thinking that we would have put jbrown right over the edge with cork dorkyness. If you didn’t read last week”s blog, jbrown’s tirade on my blog read the following, which I just loved… seriously…

Here’s what jbrown had to say:

“pathetic, if you have to struggle with a synthetic cork to open a bottle or remove it from a worm than you shouldn’t be drinking. a rabbit! a rabbit! there is $50 wasted when you could have spent it on a better bottle of wine.

“you aren’t wine lovers, you are weak and sad fetishists, i imagine you all own special crystal ware that you can only drink with a certain wine. clueless.

“go back to smoking cigars or whatever you whiners did before you started letting the blogs and spectator tell you what to think.

“bah..”

But, not to Ravenscroft…