There is one rule of etiquette that many people brake, and that’s how they hold a wine or champagne glass. You might think I’m ridiculous who is dedicating a whole post about this, but this has become my pet peeve. It annoys me so much I keep seeing it everywhere!
Unfortunately, most people are not aware of how they are holding a wine/champagne glass, so a majority of the times, they hold it incorrectly, even the jet-setters do this common mistake.
Most often, people who are educated in etiquette, wine or done a sommelier course (or just use common sense), will know that a wine or champagne glass should always be held around the stem, never on the bowl.
instagram.com/the.la.way – Holds it correctly!
You might be thinking:
“Who cares how you hold the glass? Why the need of etiquette for this? Let people do what they feel is the most comfortable…”
One could argue like this, but there are many reasons for this rule.
► One of them is that if you drink something chilled like white wine or champagne, you will heat up the drink with your hand if you hold it around the bowl, and that will spoil the taste.
► Secondary, the grease of your hands leave awful fingerprints that don’t look very nice on the crystal clear glass. If you keep grabbing your glass everywhere, there won’t be much left but ugly marks all over.
► Lastly, I personally think it looks a bit rough when someone grabs a glass by the bowl with their entire hand, instead of holding delicately with the fingers on the stem. It just looks more ladylike and less of a savage. If you start noticing the difference when people do one versus the other, you will understand what I’m talking about…
If you want to learn more about classy behavior, then you can dig deeper into this topic in my ebook “How To Be Classy.” It’s also available on Amazon Kindle, as well as normal ebook format.
The incorrect way: How NOT to hold a Wine or Champagne glass
instagram.com/oliviaculpo – Incorrect!
instagram.com/victoriabeckham – Incorrect!
instagram.com/annamikac – Incorrect!
instagram.com/andra.damian – Incorrect!
instagram.com/innesons – Incorrect!
instagram.com/rachelward_e – Incorrect!
The correct way: How to hold a wine or champagne glass properly
instagram.com/shipilovaks – Correct!
instagram.com/sandravlad – Correct!
instagram.com/rosja222 – Correct!
instagram.com/pilotmadeleine – Correct!
instagram.com/e_gordeeva – Correct!
instagram.com/chrisbittar – Correct!
instagram.com/anna_vasilevska – Correct!
instagram.com/aline_borghese – Correct!
9 Comments
Glad, I’m not the only one that see this mistake everywhere!
Join the gang!
Holding red wine from the glass and not necessarily the stem is not wrong I think. It’s just a matter of preference.
I’m so glad you brought attention to this! It’s my pet peeve as well!
I am so glad that you wrote about this topic, I see a lot of people do this and it’s so irritating!
Whenever I see a well-dressed, rich, successful woman or man holding their wine or champagne glass like it’s a cup of hot chocolate, it completely ruins their image for me and I imagine the worst about the other aspects of them that I can’t see, lol.
So Anna, thank you for doing your part in helping people learn proper table manners. Maybe you could write another
article about other basic manners to learn and bad behavior to correct for the jetset babes, fashionistas and models.
Here are a few extremely annoying examples that I see often:
– Beautiful women, having lunch, looking ladylike except for the horrible chewing mouth open sounds…
– Beautiful, well-dressed women using the ladies room, and going straight out the door afterwards, not washing or barely washing their hands… Or worse, they go do their business, then come out and touch up their makeup after barely running their hands under cold water for 2 seconds.
I see this all the time in the most elegant places and it’s my biggest pet peeve, because it’s so inconsiderate to others. It’s people like these who don’t wash their hands that have made me develop clean freak habits, when I wish I could just relax and open the bathroom door without using 5 papertowels and having to carry disinfectant wipes in my handbag.
– Next pet peeve: women who just assume that they can try something from your plate or take a sip from your drink. No, just no. I feel like, unless I am sleeping with you or you are my sister, do not touch my food or my drink. Am I weird?
– Cleaning teeth or blowing their nose at the table. Yes, I’ve seen this at high end restaurants.
– Last but not least: speaking too loudly at the table, especially when it’s a nice, elegant restaurant where people want to feel relaxed, it looks so rude when I see women talking loudly and/or swearing.
There are so many unclassy behaviors I see all the time, but I don’t judge people if they don’t know any better. I judge the people who pretend to be classy, dress up and try to act classy when they’re so obviously not (Victoria Beckham, ahem ahem).
In a way, it’s a good thing. Anyone can put on some designer clothes and look classy, but you can’t disguise bad manners. A quality man will recognize that. 🙂
Love your blog! You should write about dating older men which seems to be quite prevalent in the jet set community.
Thanks for your comment ! Anything particular you want to know on this topic? 😘
This is so interesting! I haven’t really thought about this before, but I can see that it does make a difference. I 100% agree with the hand positioning for white wine and champagne. However, I think with red wine I can be a little more forgiving of the breach of etiquette. I tend to prefer my red just slightly above room temperature so I don’t mind holding the bowl as opposed to the stem, especially since my red wine glasses are stemless. But my white wine/ champagne flutes have stems as I like the wines very chilled. I think I’m going to end up watching people more at restaurants and will now be much more self-conscientious in public.
Wow so happy to see I’m not alone in this! It is really a pet peeve of mine also.