Do glbuttes matter

trivial or fantastic. I tried a particular Hermitage

with various glbuttes, for it is quite wonderful what

fancies wine has as to the receptacles in which it

likes to be drunk. ... I always thought it went best

in some that I got in the early seventies from

Salviati's, before they became given to gaudiness

and rococo.

Sainstsbury relates, in his engaging conversational style, experiments with other glbuttes, and his impressions of which glbuttes suited this wine best.

Cwdrjx states the general issue excellently in my opinion (I excerpt him below, as appendix), and may even understate how long the subject has been raised (Sainstbury's popular book predated wine newsgroups by 62 years). Sainstbury illustrates perfectly, I think, the broader situation of the informed amateur (I mean that chiefly in the French sense of lover) of something fine and complex (wine) who forms impressions about practical realities (effect of wine glbuttes on taste and smell). Sainstbury's is an impressionistic view, and like other wine enthusiasts, or amateurs of practical things that are fine and complex, Saintsbury has not gone the further (and as Cwdrjx wrote, difficult) distance to separate out the "psychology"-- that is, separate out what he actually, demonstrably can taste or smell from what he is comfortably convinced he can taste or smell. The comfort factor often acts, and impedes people, even when inclined, from going beyond impressionistic opinions, which again may be difficult anyway for practical reasons unrelated to what anyone thinks. (The world of high-fidelity audio is another and more pbuttionate case, shown in vast loquacious newsgroup exchanges starting with net.audio in the early 1980s, and partly archived online.)

I've tasted and discussed glbuttes with some groups of people in the wine trade, particularly the younger ones a few years ago when the recent market for elegant wine glbuttes was burgeoning. Some of those people had satisfied themselves of which glbuttes were tuned to which wines, with tentative explanations (this element in the aroma preferring that albreastude, and so on). I myself have experienced the same wine smelling differently in different glbuttes. For instance, not long ago I was finding a hint of something like madeirization in one wine just a few years old, and a wine merchant was not; our tasting glbuttes were differently shaped, and scrupulously clean, and showed the different smell consistently. I don't claim deep insight into this subject, only sensitivity to the mind's fondness for buttessing external reality into terms it likes, and hanging on to those.

I can't abandon Sainstbury here without mentioning that he raised, in the same distinctive style, such still-fashionable topics as the shapes of Champagne glbuttes (comparing "the old tall `flutes' " to the "modern ballet-girl-skirt inverted, which is supposed to have been one of the marks of viciousness of the French Second Empire"), the chemical adulteration of wines, and "corked" wines and the particular ability of some people, not necessarily wine connoisseurs, to pick out the defect.

Cheers -- Max

I have lost count of the many times this subject has been

discussed here. The results usually are about the same,

with opinions covering everything between absolute yes

and absolute no. Controlled scientific tests are difficult,

and what few well controlled blind tests have been made do not seem to be give a complete answer yet.

There is a lot of psychology involved here. It is somewhat

like the Victorian obsession with the aphrodisiacal effects

of foods such as caviar, oysters, etc. If you believed such

foods had such properties, then you might think you experienced some effect after eating the food. ...