By Ian Ortega
It’s usually those small things that we don’t notice that give us away. A Ugandan girl can pretend to be classy as much as she can until you watch her hold a wine glass.
There’s a reason why wine glasses come with a stem:
1. By holding the wine glass by the stem, you are able to keep your wine at the temperature at which it is served. Yet, most Ugandans insist on holding the wine glass by the bowl. You can get away with that in Uganda, but surely at a formal dinner, your hosts will look on and wonder.
2. The other reason why a wine glass is held by the stem is in order to keep the glassware free from smudges. Remember our hands are usually full of dirt, grease and all sorts of oily stuff, if you hold your wine glass by the bowl, you’re going to leave all those marks on it which will reflect poorly on you.
As a rule of thumb: “Hold all stemmed wine glasses (red, white, etc) towards the base of the stem between your thumb, forefinger and middle finger. You’ll find that your other fingers will just rest on the base naturally.”
Once you perfect this art, you will begin holding wine glasses like a connoisseur so you can be that guy that is well-traveled at a wine-tasting event.
In our next article, we shall show you which glass to use for which drink and why.