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My English friend Barry is not only passionate about wine, he is also fastidious. He always carries a silk handkerchief wth him for wiping wine glasses in restaurants. “You never know,” he says, “about the detergents.” Back when smoking was allowed he wouldn’t accept a glass that had been hanging upsidedown over a bar. “That smoke goes right to the glass,” he would whisper.
His fastidiousness made me wonder about cleaning glasses. Jinette Humbrecht, wife of wine growerLeonhard Humbrecht, owner of Domaine Zind-Humbrecht, told us to use Calgon. “Never dish soap,” she cautioned. She explained that dish soap leaves a film, too transparent to see but present enough to affect the taste of the wine.
In the Black Forest we watched a bus boy prepping a hotel dining room to include steaming the wine glasses. Before placing a glass on a table, he would hold it over a pot of water boiling on his cart until it was completely fogged. Then he would wipe it with a linen cloth until it sparkled. “It gets rid of the dish soap,” he explained.
Guidance like the above made us give up the dishwasher, though I admit the dishwasher brought glasses out as clean and bright as anything until we began to see some clouding. “Crystal doesn’t like dishwashers,” a sommelier told us. So at home every day, it was Calgon and hot water and an occasional steaming.
All that has changed since last month. In the wine department at Galerie Lafayette, the glitzy department store in Paris, my wife found a “wine cloth.” Neatly packaged, it was labeled simply as a wine cloth with a sticker explaining that all you need to do is rinse the glass in very hot water, then wipe it with the cloth, itself washable. The cloth is made of “microfibre” and is very soft to the touch.
It works. No steaming, no polishing. We just scald the glass after rinsing thoroughly and dry it with the “wine cloth,” for which we paid just under 15 Euros (about $24.00). Our glasses have never looked better.