Just a Smidge

A story of miscommunication, wine glasses, and international intrigue

            It’s kind of ridiculous, really, to get that worked up about the size and shape of a wine glass.  I’m not talking about my brother-in-law, who leaves a set of special huge bowl-like stemmed wine glasses at our restaurant so that he can adequately enjoy the hearty taste-like-the-soil-they-were-grown-in super Tuscan reds that he favors. He maintains that it’s necessary to swirl the wine and then burrow into the glass with your nose and inhale deeply.  Then you loudly slurp the wine into your mouth and siphon it through your teeth, swishing it round your mouth before allowing yourself to swallow. Then he smiles while he describes the licorice and leather while you marvel at how quickly his teeth became temporarily stained.

No, I’m talking about how worked up I get about my own preference in wine glass. I prefer drinking wine out of a glass without a stem – what some people might call a tumbler, although that term is now sometimes used for glasses that look like stemmed goblets with the stems removed, and that isn’t at all what I’m talking about. What I like best is a glass that looks like it might have contained Smucker’s grape jelly in an earlier life. At the fanciest, I will accept the kind that’s short and tapered and fits perfectly in your hand.

In fact, that’s just what I found on a recent trip to Venice. I stopped at a little wine bar near St. Mark’s and ordered a glass of local white wine. In my just-adequate Italian, I asked the waitress to serve the wine in a small glass. She explained that they usually only serve the house wine in a tumbler and that this is called an “ombra”, but that she would serve my wine this way if that’s what I wanted.  Later I found out “ombra” means “shade” and that in the old days, the wine had to be stored in the shade at sidewalk cafes in order to keep it cool. An unpretentious neighborhood bar might serve your ombra in a tumbler, while a fancier place would serve the wine – always a small portion – in a stemmed glass.

I remembered learning that it was important to drink white wine out of a stemmed glass – and to hold it by the stem – so that the heat of your hand wouldn’t warm the wine. I like the feel of cupping the glass in the palm of my hand though, and figure that I’ll finish drinking it before it gets too warm. The little tumblers seem like something that my Italian grandmother would have used – they’re unpretentious and friendly – something you would use if a friend dropped by with a bottle of wine and you quickly grabbed a couple of glasses from the shelf.

Later in my visit to Venice, this time with my son, we stopped by another wine bar and again I ordered some white wine, requesting a pair of tumblers.  The waitress told us, without a trace of a smile, that that would not be possible, and poured the wine into stemmed wine glasses. I tried to explain to her and a nearby waiter that it was a quirky preference of mine, that I own a restaurant back home and that the waiters all know about my curious tastes in glassware. The two servers consulted and the waitress agreed to switch glasses for us, but the stern face never changed.

As we sipped our wine, my son pointed out to me that someone was talking to me. There was another waitperson on the other side of the room, preparing some food. He was staring at me and speaking directly to me, in Italian.  I couldn’t understand everything that he said, but I picked out the words “cattivo”, “vino” and “bicchiere” – bad, wine, and glass. He seemed to be scolding me, telling me that it was bad to drink wine out of inappropriate glasses.

I was a little taken aback and didn’t know how to respond. I tried to explain in a playful, joking manner why I was amused by drinking my wine out of a humble, ordinary glass, but I didn’t have the adequate grasp of Italian to state my case. The man’s expression and the way he spat the words at me conveyed that he was not in the mood for a lighthearted exchange of wine-drinking philosophy.

Needless to say, we finished our wine rather quickly, paid our bill and fled from the decidedly unwelcoming atmosphere.  As we walked the streets of Venice, in a kind of delayed reaction, I became angrier and angrier and more and more puzzled until my son had to tell me that I was making way too big of a thing out of a little wine glass.

As often occurs when something unsettling happens to me, I went over the event again and again in my head. I tried to figure out what had happened and worked out different scenarios of how I might have responded. First I had to consider why the bar employee might have become so incensed.  This is what I decided:

1.     He felt that I was not showing significant respect to the wine. I could not adequately appreciate the delicate aromas and flavors if it were not allowed to breathe properly and if it’s temperature were negatively affected by my sweaty foreign fist

2.     I was putting on airs by claiming to be a restaurant owner who knew better than the proprietors of a Venetian enoteca how best to imbibe an Italian wine

3.     I was suggesting something that was not the usual way of doing things, was contrary to the rigid standard of how food and drink is served in Italy and was not to be taken seriously, especially when accompanied by bad grammar and weak repartee

4.     The American restaurant dictum “the customer is always right” which would require an American restaurateur to allow a customer to drink his Chateau Lafit Rothchild out of a soup bowl if he so desired, was not something that was adhered to in Italy.

5.     The person who was speaking to me was simply a boorish, irritating and contemptible fool

My ruminations didn’t just stop there, though.  That wouldn’t be any fun.  After returning to the U.S. I often told friends about my adventures – which were 99 percent of a positive nature. Eventually, though, I came back to the sad story of the wine glass, because it still wasn’t resolved in my head. The more I talked about it and the more I played the scene out in my head, the more I was able to develop alternate endings to the confrontation.  Here are some of my favorites:

1.     I return my adversary’s glare and hiss, “Are you talking to me?” in a Joe Peschi accent as I vault over the bar, shattering wine glasses – all of which will soon be stemless as I make my way toward the terrified wine shop flunky, grab him by the lapels and curse at him in flawless Italian as I explain to him the concept of American-style hospitality.

2.     I invite my wine-etiquette expert to join me for a glass of wine. Using the “kill him with kindness” approach, I suggest that he convince me of the merits of using the traditional stemmed glass. We become best of friends and ever after exchange Christmas cards written in Italian.

3.     After becoming frustrated with trying to explain myself in what must sound like the conversational ability of a three-year old, I explode in a fifteen-minute English rant all roughly formulated on the concept of the wine tumbler, but really just an excuse to feel fluent once again. I circulate amongst the other patrons of the bar, speaking to no one and everyone, just enjoying the sound of my own voice until my horrified son and I are physically removed to the cobblestones outside.

So now months have gone by and I’m almost over it. I found a local restaurant that serves wine in even tinier versions of the “ombra” and call it a “smidge”. I order wine in our restaurant and the waiters serve it in my preferred vessel, with a smile. And on Christmas day my daughter gave me my own set of wine tumblers.

Did I make a big deal about a little thing? Yes, I did. Have I been obsessing about it for way too long?  For sure.  Have I been driving friends and family a little crazy with all of the telling and retelling and asking of opinions on the subject? Most definitely. Am I going to go back to Venice some day and order many glasses of wine? I’m thinking so. But now I have a new question to ask my friends.

Should I put my tumbler in my carry-on, or the checked bag?