I’m no Miss Manners. Goodness knows that “faux pas” is my middle name. And I usually don’t like to read about other people giving me advice on manners unless it is the likes of Miss Manners, or some other well-versed person studied on the subject. Yet, every once in a while someone writes or says something that seems to make sense; a light bulb goes on and voila, I’ve learned something new. Hopefully, this will be the case for you as I write about a point of using manners while drinking wine.
The other day I noticed a group of well-heeled individuals enjoying wine in a restaurant. What caught my eye wasn’t the wine they were drinking but how they were drinking it. When I tell you, it will sound so snobbish that I almost don’t want to mention it. I really don’t like to be snobby about wine. Wine should be a complement to life; therefore, if you are enjoying a wine with dinner or while hanging out by the pool or where ever, then it must be a good wine for the occasion at hand. Otherwise you wouldn’t be drinking it. But this particular pet peeve I just can’t let slide by. These well-heeled folks were holding their wine glass by the bowl. Yikes!
Some people may not know that the bowl is for holding in the wine and the stem is for holding the glass. "What difference does it make,” you ask?
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2010.