Why Drink Wine From A Jar?

All wine gift baskets should include at least one fancy jar of mustard. Why? So that when the person who you've gifted the wine to is done with the mustard, they can drink wine from a jar and remember you and your thoughtful gift.

I've always preferred drinking wine from a jar. You may laugh, but this is a step up from a jug, or the bottle! I don't know much about wine, but I do know that Gallo and Boone's Farm have the reputation they do because of the low brow quality and mass quantity of what they produce. When I was a kid we'd buy a jug of Gallo and sit around the campfire passing the behemoth around until it was done. Also when I was younger we occasionally bought a bottle of Boone's Farm to drink on a sunny day sitting at the beach. Not exactly sipping a Cabernet Savignon watching the stars. Still, they are what they are and they were my third and fourth experiences with wine-like products, coming in just after Chianti (indulging at a young age at Italian weddings) and Mogen David (the only alcohol my parents let us have a sip to cheers with at Christmas when we were kids) collectively these modest wines are the foundation of my grape experience. Wine cellars of the world may not store these libations, but convenience stores do.

Then as I grew a little wiser, I started to drink some Merlots', Shiraz', Beaujolais', Pinots' and yes, I also enjoy a little Riesling now and again. The one thing I've never liked about wine, is it's austerity. Being a fairly large man the contrast of holding a dainty thin-stemmed wine glass can be a bit much. It makes you feel somewhat like King Kong lifting the waify Ann Darrow character up to your face when you examine the contents. KING KONG LIKE WINE, ME LIKE AMBER HUE AND MINERALITY NUANCE! My solution has always been to resort to drinking wine from jars.

Jars are formidable, they don't break easy. Jars are proletariat, wine glasses are elite. Jars are frugal, wine glasses are an indulgence. Now, that being said, lets pull in the reins here for a moment.

My daughter and I broke all of my wife's delicate Riedel glasses. If you don't know, Riedel glasses are the creme de la creme of wine glasses. They are made of crystal, when you toast with them it sounds like an angel just hit their highest note in a heaven full of harps and mandolins. They really are something, those Riedel glasses. It damn near broke my heart to see my wife so upset over those things. Someday we'll join a wine club and I'll get her some new ones, then I'll smuggle in my used jar! Which brings me to my next point about drinking wine from jars.

It's OK to drink wine from fancy glasses, such as the Riedel glass. But for someone like me, someone who doesn't much value austerity or pomp, I reserve drinking wine from such vessels only on special occasions. The rare chance to eat at a fine dining restaurant for example, or as a dinner guest of friends and family. In those circumstances I mostly prefer to swim in the same glass as my company.

Conversely, if an old friend is over, say someone you haven't seen in a long time and who doesn't realize your taste in wine has surpassed the jug, you may or may not want to drink from the jar. Depends on the type of friend and whether or not you feel the need to impress upon them: A) You are now as sophisticated as a British Royale and as such you prefer only to eat finger sandwiches, drink wine from gold-leafed crystal glasses and to wipe your mouth with silk napkins. Or B) You have indeed increased in sophistication but not so much that you've become an obtuse bore. You're still the disarming, fun guy they once knew, but now you like to drink a Spanish Celeste 2006 Torres out of an old hexagonal Laurent Du Clos Walnut Dijon jar!

I drink wine from a jar also because I'm an artist. I'll be frank about it, I don't give a rat's rump what anyone thinks of me and my jars. I also shove tapered candles into old wine bottles and walk around in my green apple boxers eating Braunschweiger on rye but I digress from my point. I am unashamedly a blend of academia and roadhouse, it's a mongrel attitude that's fairly common here in the States, at least with creatives. My opinion on matters of taste are probably frowned on by the Martha Stewarts of the world, although I like to think Julia Childs and I would have a hell of a party!

Drinking wine from a jar, believe it or not, is closer to the roots of viniculture. In the Old World, especially in the rural areas, wine is still drank peasant style from a regular tumbler or mason glass. I heard this from a beautiful, knowledgeable and dare I say succulent wine rep here in the States (my wife) and she told me to double check so I did. Upon further review from various Italian, French and Greek sources, it is true that much of the world enjoys wine from a plain glass or jar, not a thin-stemmed "wine glass". This is a great fact to know the next time you want to stick it to a wine snob! I don't mean to be cruel or mean, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire you know? What's more, this history is a great segue into my next point about drinking wine from a jar.

Wine was originally a "people's drink". There was a time when there was no such thing as a $500 dollar bottle of wine with a "once in a century" vintage. A time when words weren't whispered about the next big thing at the wine club. Wine was just wine. You drank it because it was better than dirty well water. But over time, as so often is the case, a combination of clever marketing and bone-headed elitism produces wines (and glasses!) that aren't for regular people. That is why I prefer to mostly drink wine from a jar. Jars are the Robin Hood of the wine world, leaving thin stemmed glasses to crowned corporate kings and queens who wear metaphorical monocles and survive on grossly exorbitant State subsidized salaries or private nepotistic trust funds. The rest of us will drink from a jar.

Lastly, many people believe that drinking wine from a thin stemmed glass will help keep the wine at proper temperature. The fact is that body heat doesn't effect the temperature as much as the ambient temperature of the environment.Body heat temperature on a glass of wine, from the research I have done, is negligible. The original design of the wine glass came from elite precious metal goblets. Once glass design was perfected, artisans just carried over the shape of the goblet to the new glass media because people were used to and like that shape.

So hold your jar high! Drink wine from your jar triumphantly! Here's to you, me and those we love, hears to drinking wine from a jar! Cheers! Na zdrowie! Letenachin! Ваше здоровье! Proost! Salahmatie! Gan bei! Zum Wohl! Salute! Salud!