Part One: How To Earn Maximum Returns On Your Liquid Assets
Section Two ~ Glassware – The Long & Short Of It
When I was in bartending school, it became really important for me to have the perfect glass for every alcoholic beverage I served. For a while, every birthday and Christmas I was getting shot glasses, wine glasses and beer steins. I love them all. I had a lot of them in cobalt blue, my favourite colour at the time. Now, I only want clear glass. I want to be able to see the liquid…and if there is anything floating in it.
Mario thinks it’s important to own glasses that you find nice to look at. If you like it, you’ll use it more. So, we should all invest in glasses that we find lovely to admire and sip from. He spends a page explaining the differences between crystal, “hand-blown” glass, “blown” glass, “pressed” glass, and finally “cut” glass. Regardless of the craftsmanship, it boils down to this…is it stemmed or not?
The stemmed glass suggests a more elegant setting, such as tinking Bordeaux over candles to celebrate an anniversary. While your basic tumbler, or rock glass, conjures up images of sitting by the fire with a scotch balancing on your knee. Both have their place. (I wish I had a fireplace so I could act out that image)
But you can delve much further into the glass scene. There are also sour glasses, steins and Pilsners, highball glasses, snifters, sherry glasses, champagne flutes and more. Thankfully, Mario insists we do not need to have a full set of each in the same pattern. It is preferred to have the same pattern for all at the dinner table, but for entertaining in other areas it is not required.
It seems like a lot of glasses to own, so Mario gives us a formula to figure it all out. Determine how many people you can comfortably entertain in your living space, than double it for drop-ins and breakage. And, as he explains, the amount of glasses you’ll need all depends on how potable your lifestyle is. Which is why I have many.
He goes on to explain how to wash glasses, but I’m pretty sure you can all figure that out. He does recommend we wash them right away though, particularly if they had sticky liqueurs in them. And finally, check your liquor cabinet after you entertain and be sure to make a list of what you need to stock up on.
This section was really short. Seriously, three whole pages about stemware.
In our house we have waaaaay to many wine glasses, the Erisch breathable glasses that we don't let clumsy guests use,the Reidel stemless that we tend to use when we're alone, and the wal-mart (yep, wal-mart) glasses for when guests come over, because they're easy to replace should they break. Then we have the champagne glasses and the martini glasses and....it get's too complicated, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI think it's great. I like the idea of having special glasses for just you and your love to share. It makes that drink even more intimate. And it's good to have bulk glasses that are easy to replace when they break...from Wal-Mart, The Bay or even the dollar store. Each drink has its glass, but fortunately there are multi-purpose glasses that will cover more than one need. Personally, i like to have the right glass for the right drink.
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