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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

People who know about culture and stuff...come here and settle an argument!

178 replies

MumblingRagDoll · 19/08/2011 20:23

A year ago I bought a set of very nice wine glasses a bit like these from Laura Ashley...I got them on sale and tbh because I don't even DRINK wine, I thought it was nice of me as DH had no decent glasses to have wine and he likes it.

DH thinks I'm an oik because "You just don't drink wine from a red glass" apparently Hmm

He says that to see the colour of the wine is part of the "experience" of drinking it.

He's a fecking wine snob...he'l sit there discussing the stuff with his parents and it annoys me.

So. Am I an unclutured oik? Eh? Am I? AIBU to buy red wine glasses?

OP posts:
TillyIpswitch · 19/08/2011 22:46

I realise what I am about to say makes me sound like an unutterable snob, but oh well...

I would assume that someone who had such wine glasses had decorated their house in the style of page 72 of the [Ikea/Dunelm Mill/Woolworths when it existed] - delete as applicable - catalogue and probably had a wall clock with 'funky' prongy-type things sticking out from it, and words on interior walls like EAT in the kitchen and/or LOVE in the bedroom.

Your DH is right, I'm afraid.

Reminds self to re-introduce 'oik' into vocabulary

gaaagh · 19/08/2011 23:26

I'm with the "your DH is right" camp

i don't drink wine, but i used to - and colour, etc is part of the experience. i wouldn't drink it from those glasses, if i still drank. sorry!

Original poster
MumblingRagDoll · 19/08/2011 23:32

Yes Catpee the poshest folk always have little odd habits....but they can get away with it can't they? My SIL is V posh and her Mums pile house is absolutely filthy...I mean cockroaches running across the breakfast table filthy. They have a cleaner who does nothing! It's "quirky" if you're posh and tacky if you live in a 3 bed semi. Grin

OP posts:
Original poster
MumblingRagDoll · 19/08/2011 23:33

Tilly I do NOT have anything remotely like you described! I'll have you know I have very nice decor...vintage....but not shitty fake vintage.

OP posts:
cornsilx · 19/08/2011 23:34

I like coloured glasses and red wine so dh is wrong.

Whatmeworry · 19/08/2011 23:38

It's "quirky" if you're posh and tacky if you live in a 3 bed semi

Clear wine glasses are so bourgeois dahlings...........

thefirstMrsDeVere · 19/08/2011 23:42

I have pink wine glasses.

Who the feck cares what wine looks like (unless there is something is floating in it).

Just bleedin drink it.

Anyway I drink smirnoff ice out of mine

(did you know that Justine MNHQ is sooooo posh she doesnt even know what smirnoff ice is)

YummyHoney · 19/08/2011 23:48

You have no class. Your DH is correct.

cornsilx · 19/08/2011 23:48

I once bought blue glasses from next. Broke them doing hot toddies Sad

LineRunner · 19/08/2011 23:49

I have just tested Geraldine's Vase Theory. Unfortunately I only have 'cidre' tonight to work with.

It is certainly true that you can get a whole load of booze into a glass vase. The vase I have chosen to work with this evening is actually transparent, but more importantly it feels a perfect fit between my two grasping hands.

Whatmeworry · 20/08/2011 00:00
seeker · 20/08/2011 00:06

Coloured wine glasses are wrong on every level. Coloured stems are just about acceptable for hock.

LineRunner · 20/08/2011 00:10

Seeker, I am going to build a time machine and send you back to say that to Caligula, and see how far you get.

Although the translating machine might take a few days to build, I'll give you that.

You don't speak Latin, at all? I'm a bit tied up with the Laws of Physics here.

Oh shit I'll have to get you to Rome as well.

Fuck.

MrsSchadenfreude · 20/08/2011 00:17

I can't believe how incredibly snotty and poncetastic so many of you are being. It's wine. It's a drink. Do you really hold every glass up to the light to admire the colour, swill it round in your mouth/the glass before you drink a bottle of Tesco's Three Quid Malbec? We have glasses for various types of wine - right now I am drinking a Provencale rose out of a Bordeaux glass, so go right on ahead and sneer.

Would I drink wine out of red glasses? Yes, absolutely, if it was a casual drink with a cru bourgeois, on our own or with friends - which, let's face it, is most of the time, as we don't crack open the $$$ every night. If it was a very formal dinner party, I would probably serve water in these glasses, if they went well with the rest of the table stuff. I also drink out of duralex glasses in the kitchen when I am cooking. Do I know anything about wine? Err, yes, probably more than your average man on the street - I go wine tasting regularly and have a pretty strong record for being able to identify grape/region.

Why would you call someone an "oik" for having wine glasses that weren't to your taste or that you didn't approve of? Do those of you who are so sneery have the correct glasses for Bordeaux/Burgundy/Sav Blanc etc? Which you use all the time for the correct wine? Most of the Brits I know are only concerned with the quantity the glass holds!

southeastastra · 20/08/2011 00:25

the glasses in op are naffola sorry

southeastastra · 20/08/2011 00:26

oh and i am qualified to judge having an art O level

MrsSchadenfreude · 20/08/2011 00:31

But wouldn't life be dull if we all liked the same things? We are Ikea/Dunelm/Woolies free here - we have a very formal Parisian "salon" with very formal furniture, which wouldn't be to everyone's taste.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 20/08/2011 00:50

Taste is individual but if the OP's DH is the one that drinks wine & likes to see what he's drinking then he's entitled to say so. I know what he means... We have a green beer glass in the cupboard and it just makes the beer look yuk

Salmotrutta · 20/08/2011 00:56

The day I succumb to the snobbery that surrounds wine and wine glasses is the day I get measured for my shroud.

The glasses are what they are - whether you like the design or not has got bugger all to do with enjoying the taste of the wine.

Honestly, get a bleeding grip. Wine is for enjoying, yes, of course it is.

But who on earth thinks that looking at it has any real impact on whether it tastes good. Apart from puffed up self-important types that is?

I must be an utter pleb, because I serve wine in bog standard glasses and never have a moment's worry about what guests think.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 20/08/2011 01:00

Hate to disagree but you do get a lot of information from looking at something about what it's going to taste like. It influences the experience. Having done sensory trials once where I was presented with small dishes of jelly coloured one way and flavoured another (e.g. orange jelly with blackcurrant flavour) and then asked to identify the flavour, I can tell you that it is far more disorientating than you might think.

LineRunner · 20/08/2011 01:04

So if you can't see it, your taste buds are more honest with your brain.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 20/08/2011 01:16

Exactly... honest but ambiguous. Blind tastes in isolation are more difficult to pin down than you might think. If you've ever been given a potato crisp out of a plain dish and then wondered exactly what flavour it was supposed to be, that's why. Blind aromas - no visual or tactile clues - are the most ambiguous of all.

LineRunner · 20/08/2011 01:18

Which is why the Romans drank out of coloured glasses.

The wine itself had to speak, not the colour.

Salmotrutta · 20/08/2011 01:22

Well, if you can't see it and your taste buds are more honest then presumably serving wine in a red glass just makes you more honest and likely to pour crap wine down the sink?

TillyIpswitch · 20/08/2011 02:10

I can't believe how incredibly snotty and poncetastic so many of you are being.

Oh, the irony! MrsFreude, your last two posts are priceless. "Salon", indeed...! Grin

I really think the majority of posts to this thread are massively tongue-in-cheek. Mine certainly was and if it wasn't glaringly obvious, let me make that quite clear now. Your posts on the other hand seem incredibly earnest.

I'm assuming you're Australian? Please say you're not a fellow-Kiwi!!