Have you ever been upset because dirty or musty wine glasses ruined your perfect pour? A spotless and clean wine glass forms the base of a great wine tasting experience. No matter how expensive your wine is, its taste will be ruined if you serve it in a glass that smells of dishwashing soap or a greasy cleaning cloth, or if it looks grimy, stained and opaque from scratches and residual dirt.
Cleaning a wine glass seems like a simple task, until you end up breaking some of your precious glassware, or worse, injuring yourself in the process. Since a wine glass is delicate and plays an important role in the wine-tasting experience, it takes some extra care and precision to get it right. Plus, if you don’t own a dishwasher, you have to get rid of those stains and fragrances by hand.
Tutorial for hand washing wine glasses
The first thing you need on the cleaning counter is hot water, which will generate steam and loosen up the grime on your wine glasses. Next, get a clean sponge and some unscented liquid dishwashing soap. unscented because we don’t want any residual fragrance to overpower the smell of the wine that we pour next and liquid because it minimises the chances of having residual soap in our glass. If you are handling a delicate glass, using a good quality bottle brush will also help in minimising the chances of damaging it.
To clean the glass, hold it from its stem and scrub the bowl with your dishwashing soap and bottle brush gently, both on the inside and outside. Now rinse the glass thoroughly with hot water, to remove any residual soap.
Polishing your wine glasses
Wait, there’s more. Washing your wine glasses clean is just half the job. You have to ensure that they sparkle when you present them to your guests. For that, you’ll need a microfibre cloth, and don’t use it to clean anything but your glassware. Using it to clean other utensils can cause it to catch grim and hard particles, which could cause scratches in your wine glasses.
If you polish your glasses soon after cleaning them, it prevents formation of water spots and also gets rid of residual soapy water. You have to keep two things in mind while polishing your wine glasses:
1) Don’t scrub them forcefully as that could lead to damage or injury.
2) Don’t hold your glasses from their base or stem while polishing them. This is because twisting the cloth inside the bowl while holding it from its base could create enough force to break the glass from its stem.
Always hold your wine glasses from the base of their bowls by covering your hand with a part of the cleaning cloth, or a separate one, and polish the glasses without applying pressure. Avoid touching the clean glasses with your bare hands as it could leave fingerprints and you’ll have to shine them up again. If there are residual water stains or fingerprints that you are unable to get rid of, hold the glass over steam and give it another go with the microfibre cloth.
Watch the video here on 3 easy steps, you can have sparkling clean glasses
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