Drink up: the real reason wine glasses keep getting bigger
Source: FT
Polly Russell yesterday
March 22, 2018
Wine glasses, like wines, go in and out of fashion. But whether you prefer the newest trend in stemless tumblers or the voluminous style of the 1990s, one thing has marked their evolution. Over time, wine glasses have increased in size.
In a study published in the British Medical Journal last year, researchers investigated wine glasses between 1700 and 2017 and discovered a sevenfold increase in volume.
“We wanted to know if wine glasses had got bigger and whether any change might parallel our increased consumption of wine,” explains Professor Theresa Marteau of Cambridge university. “We know that larger tableware increases how much we eat – often without our awareness – and that plate sizes have increased over the past 100 years but we could find no evidence in relation to wine glasses.”
Marteau and her team are still investigating the implications of glass size for reducing wine consumption. But just because our ancestors favoured diminutive glasses, does that mean they drank less than us?
During the late 17th century, a revolution took place in English glass production after a new way of producing lead crystal glass was discovered by businessman George Ravenscroft.
Developed in his glassworks in Henley-on-Thames and supported by the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, Ravenscroft’s methods meant glass was easier to melt, had an extended “working period” and produced stronger, clearer and more practical glassware. As a result, Venice, the centre of European glassmaking since the 14th century, was usurped and English glassmaking flourished.
According to Matthew Winterbottom, curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the English renaissance in glassmaking resulted in a proliferation of production. By 1696, there were 27 glass houses in England exporting throughout Europe.
“There was a delight in the ingenuity of the maker creating these incredible bowls and increasingly elaborate stems,” explains Winterbottom. Glasses from the period are dazzling in their variety, with many of mesmerising complexity and delicacy. They must have thrilled contemporary diners as they sparkled and glittered.
Compared with today, Georgian wine glasses were tiny, often no more than 3in or 4in high. Small glass size, however, did not necessarily correspond to restrained alcohol consumption. With their gluttony and gout, Georgians were renowned for drinking copious amounts. The diminutive size of the Georgian wine glass was nothing to do with abstemiousness.
From 1745, Britain’s trade in glass was so lucrative that it was the subject of successive taxation on the basis of weight. This incentivised glassmakers to produce lighter “excise” glasses. These often featured hollowed out stems and were decorated with complex cutting and engraving to seduce potential customers.
Winterbottom, however, argues that tax is only part of the picture: “For the first half of the 18th century, people don’t tend to drink wine from the table,” he explains. “Wine is brought to them in a glass on a little salver, they take a swig and drain it and then it is taken back to the sideboard and rinsed. That’s really why they are so small in the 18th century – it’s to do with fashion, not so much [to do with] tax.”
During the Victorian period, the size and number of wine glasses served with the meal began to increase. Where previously dinners were served à la française in two or three help-yourself courses, the 19th century saw the adoption of eating à la russe, where successive courses of ready-plated food were placed in front of diners.
From the 1990s and into the 2000s, a more voluminous, tulip-style glass with a thin rim becomes popular, allowing drinkers to appreciate the taste and scent of wine. In the 2010s, tumbler-style glasses begin to appear as a more informal way to serve wine
The relative informality of Georgian grand dining was replaced by Victorian rigidity and rules that helped the aspiring middle classes navigate the contours of social acceptability. Dinners of seven or more courses were now accompanied by paired wines served in bespoke glasses. “With glasses remaining on table and not being brought to you,” says Winterbottom, “they needed to be bigger, because they are not being refilled every time you took a drink.”
Well into the 20th century, hand-blown, elaborately cut wine glasses were associated with fine dining, but their status diminished with industrial manufacturing and the subsequent fall in prices. By the time garages were giving away “crystal” sets with a purchase of petrol in the 1980s, the ornate wine glass was officially naff. Today’s liking for simple, large glasses can be traced to the gradual rejection of style over content in matters of dining from the 1970s onwards.
According to the study in the BMJ, wine consumption rose fourfold between 1960 and 1980 and almost doubled again during 1980-2004. Glass size may play a factor in encouraging consumption but ultimately the growing popularity of wine has been determined by its availability and affordability in the late 20th century. The BMJ study reveals how the girth of glasses has grown over time but, in the context of the 18th and 19th centuries, this says less about quantities imbibed than it does about changing fashions in dining and drinking. Size, it turns out, may not always matter.