Which glass should I use to taste Champagne?
Excerpts from an interview with Clément Pierlot, Cellar Master of Pommery Champagne.
(This post was edited by Word Factor. Click here for more information)
A French version of this article was published on Le Petit Journal. click here.
It was an unexpected and happy movement. I brushed aside two glasses standing on a coffee table. They were wider in the middle and beveled down, yet their shape did not matter anymore. All that remained on the ground were shards of broken glass.
These two glasses were a gift, two champagne glasses that had nothing in common with the ones I used for my friends: six “tulip” glasses made of crystal, also known as flutes. Thin, elongated, fragile, and unique with reliefs of light on a stand, my flutes have a formal spot in my home.
I therefore could not care less about the two broken glasses, yet I was doubting: “Am I serving champagne with the proper glasses when I use the flutes?”
I asked the question to the Chef de Cave—the winemaker—of Pommery Champagne, Clément Pierlot, while interviewing him during an online tasting dinner in June 2020 organized by the French Institute-Alliance Française, Tastings and Vranken-Pommery America:
Pierlot’s answer was a resounding ‘no.’
