Restaurant criticized for serving wine in water glasses: justified or nonsense?

Would you find it strange if a restaurant served your wine in a water glass? Or would you think: who cares, as long as I can drink the wine? The English pizza chain Franco Manca knows how its guests would answer that question. The chain came in for a torrent of criticism when it emerged that they serve wine in water glasses.

A TikToker who went to eat at a Franco Manca location was quite outraged by her wine being served in a water glass. ”Franco darling, I love you. But WTF???” was her response. Another influencer decided to respond by launching a Bring Your Own Glass campaign for Franco Manca. It is clear: the pizza chain’s glassware is not appreciated—at least, not for wine.

Watering down the wine

Wine in a Duralex glass—according to FavorFlav’s Sharon, this really is the horror too. Because wine in such a thick water glass really does nothing for the wine. It mainly evokes associations with cheap plonk in a café of yesteryear—for let’s be honest: these days, you can’t drink cheap wine anywhere anymore. Long live the sky-high hospitality prices… Is that why we are seeing fewer and fewer water glasses being used for wine here too?

Fits Italian ‘sprezzatura’

At least, in northern Europe. In the Mediterranean region—countries such as Spain and Italy—it is still quite normal to drink wine from water glasses. It is a glass, and its purpose is for drinking from. Period. Franco Manca itself also says that its choice pays tribute to the Italian concept of ‘sprezzatura’. That means something like ‘making something difficult look easy’. According to the chain, serving a complex product such as wine in a water glass fits that philosophy perfectly.

Why you drink wine from a real wine glass

Of course you can, but… There are indeed good reasons to serve wine in wine glasses. Glasses with stems, that is. This keeps your wine from warming up when you hold the glass by the stem. Warmed wine absolutely affects the way the wine tastes; ideally, you want to prevent that. If you pour your wine into a stemless water glass, your wine will warm up regardless.

Secondly, swirling your wine, which releases the aromas, also works much better in a real wine glass. Finally, a stem prevents the glass from getting greasy from your hands. Not entirely unimportant, because we want to keep our glass clean.

Choosing the perfect wine glass

Franco Manca clearly thinks the fuss over its creative water/wine glasses is nonsense. They responded in a playful way. Customers who ordered two large glasses of wine and mentioned the names Hayley and Milly—the names of the outraged influencers—received the rest of the bottle of wine for free. The chain has also announced that it will ‘start looking for new glasses as soon as possible’. Perhaps these tips for choosing the perfect wine glass will help.

Read also:

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• Will we all soon be drinking wine made from… bananas?
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Source: Daily Mail