Wine glass
Katy Brand toasts the wine glass and delves into its origins from a dinky little thing to the gargantuan glass it is today.
Have you got one of those wine glasses that can hold an entire bottle of wine? Katy Brand does and she’s even used it for wine - albeit because of a sprained ankle, which would have stopped her from hobbling back and forth to the kitchen for refills.
But if we skip back a few hundred years, the wine glass was tiny. Footmen brought their masters what was essentially a shot glass. They quaffed back their wine in one. So how did we go from those dinky little things to the gargantuan goblets we have today? Is it because letting the wine breathe in a bigger glass makes it smell and taste better? Or is it a reflection of our drinking habits?
Join Katy and the show's resident public historian, Greg Jenner, is glass expert Russell Hand from Sheffield University and Barry Smith, Director for the Study of the Senses at London University.
Producer: Graihagh Jackson
Picture: Wine glass, Credit: Albina Kosenko/Getty Images
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Why have wine glasses got bigger over time?
Duration: 01:55
Broadcasts
- Mon 29 Jun 2020 19:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Tue 30 Jun 2020 01:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Tue 30 Jun 2020 08:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Tue 30 Jun 2020 12:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Tue 30 Jun 2020 17:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Sun 5 Jul 2020 23:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
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