Years ago I was wandering through a furniture store. I was in college and needed a cheap bed or something. It was a furniture warehouse kind of place. The store was one giant white room with too bright fluorescent lights sucking the employees’ souls up through the panel-less drop ceiling. Cheery.
As I picked my way around the furniture I came across a wine glass. It was alone on a kitchen table in a failed attempt to make it look, um, dinnery. It didn’t. But I really liked the glass. I asked the saleskid that had been shadowing me since I walked in if it was for sale. He wasn’t sure and went scampering off to check with his manager.
While he was gone I wandered the store and found another one. I didn’t know the finer points of wine sipping back then. I didn’t know that a proper glass should have a wide gentle curve at the bottom to facilitate a gentler pour and give the red wine plenty of surface area to breath. I didn’t know that a good glass should curve in at the top to direct the wine’s nose to the drinker’s nose. I didn’t even know the difference between crystal and regular glass. But I did know that I really liked these glasses.
Finally the saleskid returned with the news that, yes, I could buy these glasses for $5/glass. They didn’t have any in boxes, they only had the 6 that were variously displayed throughout the store but I was welcome to them if I wanted to hunt them down. After two hours and finding 5 glasses my girlfriend and I gave up on the 6th. I paid my $25, which was probably my furniture budget for that semester, and left very pleased with myself.
I’ve always liked wine and I didn’t have any stemware so on a certain level this purchase did make sense. I managed to survive without that desk or chair or whatever it was for a few months.
I’ve used those glasses constantly for the last fifteen years. In that time I held a job at a wine shop where I learned how wrong they are for drinking wine properly but I just don’t care. I still think that they are the most attractive wine glasses that I’ve come across. I’ve tried to find more like them but can’t. They are perfectly proportioned and elegant without appearing to be too delicate.
The problem is that stuff made of things like glass and porcelain tends to break with use. One by one I’ve managed to drop them, bang them on cabinets or find every possible way to accidentally break thm. Last week we opened a bottle of French wine and I grabbed for my glasses. I realized for the first time that there were only two left. Then later that night I was washing them and broke one!
So now I’m down to one. I have plenty of other glasses and lots of stemware. I have crystal glasses with curves in all the right places, there are delicate pink flutes in our cabinet that came with my wife, and even some goblets for Belgian beers. But this one lone surviving wine glass remains my favorite.
I won’t stop drinking from it. Storing it away where it’s protected from my clumsiness wouldn’t make any sense – I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. So, it’s doomed. It may hang on for a few years however it is a statistical impossibility that I won’t break. But I will certainly enjoy it in the meantime.
