Burgundy glasses & Coffee cups : essay on the best ways to drink wine

   We’ve recently moved to Gstaad for the summer season. If you don’t know Gstaad, it is one of the most prestigious luxury hotspots in Europe. Let’s phrase it like this.

   It’s our first time working in a 5-star environment, and there would be a thousand things to say about it. About the type of guests we attend, about the specificities of this type of service, about the seasonality of the region, about the type of people working these jobs, about the racial & gendered divisions in the service industry in general. Maybe a different time.

   One thing I’d like to mention here & now is the pleasure I’m having, as a waiter, to be working with a sommelier. 

   To be around someone deeply knowledgeable about any specific subject is always quite valuable for any curious person, no doubt, but in the context of service, it truly is amazing. Someone wants wine ? They can come around and give far better experiences to the guests asking than I ever could, describing with precision tastes and subtle notes one often can’t quite put a finger on as a profane (or let’s say less-initiated), and more importantly explain why & how these flavor profiles came to be during the production process. 

   And for someone interested in the concept of Terroir, this is really a goldmine of information - how the interactions between plants and climate, type of soil, specific vinification processes inherited from history & geographical features will go and impact the final product, every shift with the sommelier opens to the possibility of a glimpse into fascinating aspects of the World we live in.

   Guillermo, Sven, if you’re somehow reading this, thank you, very inspiring work you’re doing.

   Amongst many other things, we were discussing the type of wine glasses to use during service, and the specificities of different forms. You see, Burgundy glasses are quite larger than your usual wine glass, with a wider bowl at the base, allowing more surface area in contact with the air, letting the delicate aromas develop their complexities, and the shape of the glass helps diffuse the wine on the entire surface of the tongue. Bordeaux glasses, on the other hand, are thinner yet have a larger chimney which will help to soften the tannins, while guiding the wine towards the back of the palate. Because of their shapes and intent, these two types of glasses are recommended for different types of wine : Burgundy will be more indicated for lighter wines, typically a Pinot Noir, while Bordeaux glasses will work better with strong, rich, full-bodied grape varieties like a Merlot, Cabernet or a Malbec. If I understood correctly.

    This is not a revolutionary concept, and it exists elsewhere as well : tell a Belgian person that the shape of the Beer glass they serve you in doesn’t matter and you’ll see what they have to say ! 

   And in the context of the Restaurant, one can understand why the difference would matter. Our sommelier comes to the table with a 76 pages-long wine list, with prices going all the way up to 19000 CHF a bottle - a Romanée-Conti Grand Cru Monopole 2023 which I cannot wait to try, whenever you feel like opening one bottle for the staff guys.

   Anyway, yes, guests are buying extremely expensive bottles, and because of this, they are in their right to expect the flavors & aromas of the wine to be put in valor and developed to their entire extend. Hence the shape of glass most adapted to the type of Wine they are drinking.

   But here comes the twist of this small article : don’t we also know that taste is a bit more complex than what we call « taste » when referring to the sensation we feel with our tastebuds & our sense of smell ?

   Don’t we know that anticipation & excitement play a huge role on the pleasure we derive from an experience ? Don’t we know that routine inhibits pleasure receptors ? Hasn’t it been shown that the tastes are historical & social constructions in the first place ?

  Now that the problem is posed, I’d like to submit you a theory. A working hypothesis, let’s say. 

   I think wine tastes best when poured in a coffee cup.

   Have you ever had wine in a coffee cup ? No ? Why would you, you might ask ? 

   Maybe because you didn’t have wine glasses laying around, let alone Burgundy glasses to pair with your lovely Barbera. 

   Yet the occasion of opening this bottle came around and you had to improvise. A trekking trip, a festival, or maybe you’re on a boat, or maybe a friend is showing up unannounced - in any case, something happened, and you forgot the formalities. You forgot about how the tannins would dissolve, you forgot about the after-notes of vanilla & cinnamon, and how many months this wine touched oak. And precisely because of how this situation came to be, your brain will not only remember this moment much more, but all your sense will be activated by this sense of novelty, of breaking normalcy, of this longed for authenticity. 

   During all these years of service, you can imagine I’ve seen a lot of people. Lot of different people. I’ve seen and served very wealthy people, some of them quite lovely as well as some of them quite awful, but this is besides the point, maybe one day we’ll talk more about the service industry, but again, today is not the day.

   The point is, I’ve observed many wine experiences - and many of them were numbed wine experiences.

   Many people ordering wine and drinking it, but as a given, as a commodity. Something taken for granted. Of course, they are used to it. Could have been something else anyway. It’s just another Tuesday after all.

   Can we really speak about enjoyment in this case ? Maybe. I’m not quite sure. I think there’s enjoyment derived from the interiorized social gratification of being able to buy something with so many zeros, I think there’s the positive reinforcement of the peers you’re sharing the bottle with, and maybe there’s even a few acquired tastes that are actually involved, with the help of the sommelier, I’ll give you that. 

   But my point was not that expensive wine tastes bad. 

   My point is that wine tastes better poured in a coffee cup. 

   It’s a metaphor taken too literally, but now I feel the need to justify it. 

   During all these years of service, you can imagine I’ve seen a lot of people. Lot of different people. I’ve seen and served not very wealthy people, saving a couple hundred euros to be able to offer an experience to their families. I usually saw them once or twice, but I remember them very clearly.

   What struck me is how much they enjoyed their moments. Every time. A little extra attention and it was a big deal to them already - of course, they are not used to it. 

   Oh, we are talking about the service industry, are we not ? Let’s get back on track with the common theme between this paragraph and what I was saying about coffee cups : the occasion.

   I think a good occasion creates the conditions not only for memories to last longer, but also for the very way we experience the World to be enhanced, in all aspects, which would impact our sense of excitement, of pleasure, of taste.

   Because sensations of taste & pleasure are not real tangible things but the results of funny chemical reactions happening in our brains. And our brains function in very funny ways indeed.

Eating your favorite dessert at 3 in the morning after a 13 hours shift and your brain can’t physically enjoy it properly, it’s already full of cortisol and melatonin and cannot get much more information. On the contrary, any random fruit you don’t even like that much will feel amazing and taste delicious if you are sharing it with a person you love, that you haven’t seen in a long time. 

   That’s how it works, I don’t make the rules : our brains base their judgment of any given experience on the complete package - it takes into account social, environmental & personal cues before allowing pleasure hormones to be released and for you to enjoy something. 

This is why I'm affirming this allegedly outrageous claim. Wine tastes best served in a Coffee Cup.

   Or is it all a post-rationalization ? I’m interested in yet I cannot afford a 7000 CHF bottle of Petrus - again, guys, whenever you feel like, I’ll be up for a degustation - so maybe I’m thinking it’s nothing special in the end, as a way to resolve this cognitive dissonance. I’m aware of our coping mechanisms and how we deal with a World we didn’t create and we don’t understand nor accept fully. 

   Yet I cannot ignore that many of my most memorable experiences, the ones that count in the end, were under the sign of improvisation, of the non-expected, of authenticity. 

   And I can’t help seeing how these crazy bottles are being drank - with restrain, sophisticated distance, semi-blasé look on the face.

Where’s the enthusiasm ? Where are the smiles ? 

   And yes, I do actually think wine tastes better in a Coffee cup. 

   Or let’s phrase it like this. When the occasion comes to pour wine in Coffee cups, there usually are smiles on faces.

Etienne, June 12026