Alcohol, as a rule, is generally easy to serve. For beer, you simply hand someone a can or a bottle and, if need be, a bottle opener. For hard alcohol, you simply pour the spirits into a mixer, add in a straw or perhaps a mini umbrella, and send them on their way. For shooters, you place the alcohol in a shot glass and, depending on what the person is drinking, give them something to deflate the alcohol’s flavor: a lime, a lemon, a stomach pump.

While wine is a type of alcohol, it refutes this easy-to-serve concept. It’s not horribly difficult to serve, but when compared to other forms of alcohol, its proper service requires a little more know how, a know-how that is facilitated by an understanding of the different types of wine glasses.

Three Main Wine Glasses

Although wine glasses can come in many varieties — with different sizes and shapes abounding — there are three general wine glass categories aimed at encompassing the most common types of wine.

Sparking Wine Flutes: Sparkling wine flutes are tall and thin, like a wine glass that works out. They are used to holding all kinds of sparkling wine, including champagne. Because sparkling wines contain carbonation, flutes are designed to encourage carbonated bubbles to remain active. If this type of wine is served in a shorter, fatter wine glass, it will be exposed to air quickly, causing the drink to go flat and bursting the wine’s bubble in more than one way.

White Wine Glasses: White wine glasses are tulip shaped. They are typically medium in size, ranging from eight to fourteen ounces. The rim of white wine glasses is tapered inward. This inwardness helps direct the white wine’s aroma to the nose, greatly enhancing the wine’s flavor.

Red Wine Glasses: Red wine glasses are slightly larger than white wine glasses, tipping the scales between ten and sixteen ounces. The bowl, more fishbowl like, is larger and rounder, but, like the white wine glass, it is also tapered inward. This also directs the aroma of the red wine to the nose, allowing the drinker to use their sense of smell to make their wine tasting experience much more flavorful.