"Seasoning the glass"?

"Seasoning the glass"?

I was listening to a podcast over the weekend, and a wine enthusiast was discussing how during a tasting in Italy they "seasoned the glass" of each taster by swishing some of the wine in a glass, then pouring that glass of wine into another, and so on, apparently preparing all glasses for the reception of the actual pour that would be tasted.

This sounds slightly bogus to me (glass is relatively impermeable, right?), though perhaps what's happening here is that the wine that is introduced to the glass helps bring the temperature of the glass in line with the temperature of the wine (though if that's the goal, it would seem to be defeated by repeated pouring-repouring).

I think the other thing "seasoning" accomplishes is rinsing out any off flavors, perhaps left behind by washing or storing.

To me, the term "seasoning" is a misnomer. Rinsing is more appropriate, though it certainly doesn't sounds as sophisticated.

Sometimes we swirl a little water in the glass before using if we haven't used the glass in a while. The residual water left in the glass is so trivial and it isn't worth worrying about watering down the wine.

Not sure if it does anything other than rinse the glass and if it's not much wine I'm fine with a som. doing the "seasoning"
I tend to sniff any empty glasses I'm going to be drinking out of so I can see if they have been tainted by soap or other problems (like long storage in a wood cabinet).

Hi,

At the Moto beet dinner earlier this year, they used a laser to smolder something with the smoke captured in a wine glass. You could smell the dusky smoke as you drank the after dinner wine.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

At the Moto beet dinner earlier this year, they used a laser to smolder something with the smoke captured in a wine glass. You could smell the dusky smoke as you drank the after dinner wine.

Regards,

It's a wonderful trick, and it emphasizes how smells and tastes can linger in a glass (dishwasher soap anyone?).

In terms of seasoning a glass, you'd attain the same thing just by giving the glass a fresh rinse, dry and polish before you drank out of it. For me, when I go to drink off a bottle, the very first thing I do is smell the glass.

I prefer not to have water in my wine glass. How much of an effect does it really have? Not sure, but in my opinion it does have some impact on the nose and the legs

Seasoning the glass as described would seem to remove that, and also clean out any other stuff, like lint, residue from washing, or whatever, that might be in the glass. I don't think that taking the seasoning wine from glass to glass to glass is such a great idea since any impurities would be concentrated in the last glass, but maybe that tradition values the wine - if you used a different bit of wine in every glass, you could use up a lot of wine.

I like the idea.

I can understand rinsing a glass to ensure that there's no soapy residue to throw off the flavor of the wine, or other beverage. When I used to judge beer competitions, we would prime the glass with water or a very light beer to get rid of any soap, since soap would take away a beer's foamy head.

As for wine itself, I would suggest rinsing, or seasoning, your glass with the wine you will be drinking, not a "pace car" wine that has a different flavor profile than what you will be tasting.

The first time I saw this was at dinner at Babbo in New York a number of years ago. I asked what the sommelier was doing and I was told the he was "charging" the glasses. This is the only time I remember having this done in the US. I was in the Piedmont in October and most of the restaurants charged or primed the glasses.

Here's some links to some discussions of this matter. I certainly think it doesn't hurt.

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/302071

http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/sho ... ne+glasses

deesher wrote:The first time I saw this was at dinner at Babbo in New York a number of years ago. I asked what the sommelier was doing and I was told the he was "charging" the glasses. This is the only time I remember having this done in the US. I was in the Piedmont in October and most of the restaurants charged or primed the glasses.

I also saw this for the first time at another Batali venture, B & B Ristorante in Las Vegas in the Venetian.

I was just reading about this ritual in Mario's "Babbo" cookbook.
He admits it's just as much for spectacle as it is for the reasons provided by the previous posts.

Well I have a fresh perspective from a winemaker...the GF and I were tasting wines yesterday in Napa with Tor Kenward and he had us rinse out our glasses with a splash of the upcoming wine. So after we finished chardonnay, we rinsed with a splash of syrah, dumped it into the next glass, and then proceeded to pass that rinse amount around the table into and out of each person's glass. His thought was that it got out the previous wine's flavors, and doesn't dilute like water would.