apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I own a set of white wine glasses (hand-me-downs from the mom-in-law), a set of champagne flutes (resulting from an unhealthy obsession with the film Sabrina) and some assorted others (two huge balloon glasses and a single claret glass).

Except for the claret glass, which is built like a brick, I'm afraid of using the others for fear of breakage, so they only come out a few times a year.

It depends on the wine: for our everyday cabernet, a normal tumbler does the job of containing the liquid we drink without much regard. For that special bottle we've been keeping in the cellar for a special occasion , red OR white, we use balloons. They enhance the flavor and give the bottle the treatment it deserves.

We have glasses for everything. My husband is a bit of a beer nut, so we have glasses for any type of beer you can think of. Then I have stemless and stemmed red and white glasses. And we have port glasses, sherry glasses, margarita glasses, high balls, low balls, etc.

Oh, then there are the juice glasses, coffee mugs, water bottles...

I use glasses specific to the wines. In the spring clean I finally gave away 1/2 of the set to get down to 4 of each. Also, through away all the extras that didn't match the set.

We have two sets of wine glasses that we use for red or white. One set is very durable (read: cheap...) and the other set was a wedding gift and they're nice, hand blown glasses. We also have a set of flutes which we do use from time to time, and some sherry glasses and cordials inherited from my grandmother which we rarely use.

I don't have any. Well, one champagne flute from our wedding, the other broke. I don't really have space for any either. We pretty much stick to only drinking wine when eating out or at someone else's house.

It's not that I wouldn't mind a set (one set) but I just wouldn't know which type could sort of cover all the bases.

I'm a bit of a glass nut myself. Our red wine glasses, used most of the time, are big-bowled glass, our white are smaller crystal stemware, and we have a few assorted sets for champagne and desert (Port). I'm not venturing into the bear glass world and may need a new kitchen to store my want-list.

I have way too many glasses, but love them all! Inherited wedding crystal from my grandmother and great grandmother. Fancy wine wine and champagne glasses for sit-down meals. Stemless champagne flutes that won't spill during all-girl prosecco and poker nights. Martini glasses because sometimes I like to have cosmo parties. And all-purpose Ikea wine glasses because they are disposable in the sense that no one has to cry if one breaks but glass and reusable

We have a set of 6 Ikea wine glasses. They're not anything special, probably white wine to be honest. (we mostly drink red). We barely use them though; we got some short stemless glasses for our wedding and like to use them most of the time. They have a nice weight and make us feel European.

We also have champagne glasses (3 pairs, argh), 2 sherry glasses and 2 port glasses. We barely use any of them.

I have two pairs of champagne flutes, bought at yard sales (I like that they're different), a set of 6 very nice red wine glasses, some generic red wine glasses and some very very generic white wine glasses.

We have TONS of stemware, as I'm obsessive about buying it and love to drink. And, we have a gorgeous built-in in our dining room, which was begging to be filled when me moved in.

I couldn't even begin to count - a few sets of over-sided red wine glasses, two sets of champagne, stemless champagne, tumblers, martini.....I think we have 3 white wine glasses left, as we're always breaking them.

I have found CB2 to be a great resource for inexpensive and interesting bar-ware. I own two sets of their "box" of wine glasses. You get 12 to a box for under $30. I use those for parties. I hate plastic cups :-)

We use tumblers for the everyday stuff and take down the wedding crystal for good bottles (both white and red glasses). However, we also have a set of flutes and some extra flutes as well, because we drink a decent amount of sparking wine. Okay, we mostly drink sparking wine. When we lived in France we spent a lot of time in Reims and Epernay.

I have 8 Ikea wine glasses. I'm such a clutz it's dumb to spend a ton of money on good glasses. As it is I pick up 6 more every time I go to Ikea.

All my wine glasses are from art & wine festivals (two of each), so there's a vast array of shapes.

1 set purchased years ago in prague - gorgeous lead crystal.

We have a set of all purpose cut crystal goblets that we use for red and white (although we mostly drink red). About 2 dozen champagne glasses because who likes to celebrate alone. We use these at least once a week. We really like to celebrate. LOL

I have a set of cheap sherry glasses that I don't like but I haven't found anything to replace them with yet.

Wow, everyone has so many glasses! I have 5 wine glasses (probably for white technically) and that's it. Then about 6 assorted thrift store drinking glasses. I don't have room for anything more.

We are enthusiastic wine drinkers and have two big, happy, rambunctious dogs. Because they are happy, their tails whip back and forth in their frenzied way and destroy anything in their wake, particularly wine glasses (full, natch) sitting on our low-slung, tail-wagging-level midcentury coffee table.

After a year of picking up cheap IKEA glasses every time we visited there, we gave up. We bought some decent looking, tough, crystal clear acrylic wine glasses from Target, the kind the fancy hotels let you have by the pool, and haven't looked back. Such is life with big ol' dogs (and children, I imagine!)

I have two sets of wine glasses: one sort of standard bowl for white and a tiny set of glasses one might use for Port, but that my mother always used for her Chardonnay when I was growing up. I rarely use them, but I keep them around for sentimental value. I end up using the standard small bowl glasses for any wine I drink. I lost the gorgeous, Waterford big-bowl glasses in my divorce. *sniff*

We stop at two sets--one for reds, one for whites. I'm sure it'd be nice to have champagne flutes and whatnot, but we've only got so much room in our kitchen.

We recently got this "Wine Tasting for Two" set from Waterford:

http://tinyurl.com/3aywlr

They're crystal, and the price is not bad. It was a wedding gift. In fact, we got six sets--a service for twelve, total. We donated the Ikea glasses we had been using and vowed to go for crystal everyday. They might break eventually, sure, but until then we're getting some fine use out of them.

I'm loving my Bodum stemless glasses - I have a set of 4 for red and I think two for white (for guests, I'm not really a white wine drinker). They are so light they seem like they would be fragile but so far so good - dishwashed many times and no breaks. I used to have stemware but got tired of throwing away at least one broken glass everytime they were used/washed (or so it seemed untill there were none)...

Please don't drink out of juice glasses unless you are drinking 2 buck chuck. It really does make a difference and I am not even a wine snob. It's not just companies trying to sell you more glasses. The shape of the bowls really make a difference. I went to a BYO and all they had was juice glasses and honestly we couldn't even taste the wine out of the wrong glasses. Even if you just go buy the cheap ones, drink out of some sorty of wine glass.

Also, another tip about the care of those crystal glasses - don't be scared to use the wedding registry glassesbecause they are too nice for everyday. If they are real crystal, then they have to "get wet" every now and then or they will dry out and gets little cracks and even chip more easily. This is because crystal is really a slow moving liquid and it needs refreshing on occassion.

I have a ton of glasses, and I want more. We change glasses between different types of wine even at home. It makes even the most average wines more enjoyable and more fun to drink!

I have a set for white and a set for red...I don't drink the bubbly often enough to have needed it yet. But this winter I will get more....I have 2 of each.

After a somilier told us that the glasses don't actually make much of a difference, it's all marketing to get you to spend more money, I went home and tried one bottle of wine out of several different glasses, my enormous balloon glasses, more average red wine glasses, white wine glasses, pint glass, and I've gotta say, I couldn't detect even the slightest difference.

I do love stemware though, but I buy it more for aesthetic purposes now.

(I suspect I drink my champagne too quickly to worry about preserving the bubbles.)

I'm not sure why I've never done the tasting experiment. Next bottle of wine I open will be tasted from several different glasses.

I'm considering buying stemless glasses to simplify dishwashing and storage.

I don't have any, due to space constraints and clumsiness (a beautiful set of martini glasses I got for my 30th birthday met an untimely end within 24 hours). I use Moroccan tea glasses (for tasteful portions) and highball glasses (for bad-day-at-work portions). I do think they are so pretty and graceful. Maybe if I taped oven mitts to my hands I could bring some in?

Babbling -Just to clarify my earlier comment, the glasses don't have to be fancy, and you don't need a shape for every wine varietal, but drinking wine out of a round bowl glass absolutely makes a difference over drinking it from a flat (usually thick rimmed) juice glass. The sommelier also knows a ton more than we do - (S)he has probably done tastings in regular glasses with wine that has already been decanted. A regular glass does not allow your wine to breathe at all (i guess it doesn't matter if it's cheap wine). There's a reason people swirl their wine. Also, the sommelier knows exactly how to taste the wine and where on the tongue to look for different flavors. The average drinker can use a little help with a glass that puts the wine on your tongue in the right place. Also, I think stemless glasses are so fun and easy but the stems keeps your wine glasses from getting gross fingerprints all over them and helps the wine maintain its proper temperature better. Cheers.

We have a couple sets of flutes--well a whole one and an earlier partial set that caused us to buy the new one [we couldn't find the old style anymore]. We also have a set of white wine glasses and five glorious red wine glasses from Tiffany's, the remainder of another couple's wedding present. They NEVER drink wine [the missing sixth glass broke in a move], so passed them along to us. They are so thin and light, like glass bubbles, it's almost like drinking from air.

The last time we bought white wine glasses, we found some in open stock that were very close to the remaining ones we had, so we were able to just buy some replacement glasses. Our initial plan had been to buy two or three similar but obviously not identical styles to mix it up at the table. But they weren't different enough, and it just looked like a mistake. Still, I wouldn't mind to try to do that again sometime.

We have champagne, pinot noir globes, white wine stems, stemless sake glasses, high ball, fancy and regular water glasses. All wedding gifts, and red wine really does taste so much better out of the globes. You can breathe in the wine while you're tasting it, I love those glasses.