2-6 It Happens to the Best of Us

A friend unintentionally taught me a great lesson about glassware on Super Bowl Sunday. Not every event requires good (aka Reidel) glasses. Some of you may argue that not every event needs wine, but in my defense, I'm not the one who brought the wine. I was, however, very happy to accept a glass of it. I gladly sipped on the Sauvignon Blanc, from the very popular Marlborough (New Zealand), while talking to the other wine-drinking ladies, prior to kick-off. As soon as the football started being tossed around the field, we all crowded into the seats around the big screen. I set my glass on the coffee table and nervously watched it as different male guests clumsily passed by, waved their arms, and threw things at the television. I decided to move the glass behind me, safe from the rambunctious boys, and onto the windowsill. Safe, that was, until the jumping kitty cat made her way from atop the chair next to me, onto the sill, and beside my glass. Hmmm. There was no good spot for it. As I reached around to grab the glass, its contents mysteriously made their way onto the chair beside me and the floor beneath me, and the glass crashed to the floor...in pieces. All that care taken to keep someone else from breaking the glass, and I managed to do it myself.

And what was the score of the game? I had no idea. I'd spent the first quarter so worried about someone breaking my glass, that I hadn't paid a bit of attention to the TV, not even the commercials.

I felt horrible. That is, until the hostess told me she'd just bought the glasses at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $2.50 a piece. What a relief. At that moment I wished that I'd been able to tell everyone who'd ever broken one of my glasses the same thing. Lesson learned. Anyone who owns wine glasses should buy cheap glasses for occassions other than dinner parties.

Cheap glasses always share one characteristic that keeps me from wanting to buy them; they have what I call a "rolled" rim. What I mean by this is that the edge of the glass that you sip from is not sharp, its rounded, and thicker than the rest of the glass. This keeps the rim from chipping, but it makes it slightly less enchanting to drink from (in my view). That said, the smaller the "roll", and the sharper the edge, the nicer the glass will seem, even if it doesn't cost very much. However, its also true that the smaller the "roll", the more careful you have to be when washing it, but we've already discussed that issue, right?

So if you see a woman walking through Crate and Barrell testing the edge of each glass to her lips, that's me, trying to find my cheap glasses, and testing how sharp they are. As this is probably very unsanitary, I'm not recommending anyone do the same.

PS. I noticed the other day that Riedel is selling a line of glassware at Target. They were priced at 4 for 44.99, which is still over $11 a glass. They did have a sharp rim, but for the Super Bowl next year, I'd say go for the C&B glasses at $2.50.