Glassware

In La Mancha, you're really drinking two completely different wines, and each needs its own glass. One is Airén: pale, light, and usually drunk young. The other is Cencibel: powerful, dark, often aged a year or longer in oak. Pour both from the same glass and you do at least one of them a disservice.

For Airén, a narrow, tulip-shaped glass with a tapering opening works best. It concentrates the delicate citrus and white-blossom aromas that a cool fermentation coaxes out of this otherwise unassuming grape — in a wide glass they'd vanish instantly. That's also why it's served cold, between seven and nine degrees Celsius, which in the summer heat of the Meseta is the only bearable temperature anyway.

Cencibel needs more room in the bowl of the glass. Thanks to intense sun exposure, it often carries more alcohol than a narrow opening could handle — there, the alcohol would completely mask the fruit. It's served at sixteen to eighteen degrees Celsius, noticeably cooler than a Manchego house ever gets in August anyway.

A young Cencibel doesn't need a decanter. It's a different story with a Reserva or Gran Reserva, which by regulation may age up to five years. After so much time in barrel and bottle, sediment settles, and half an hour of air opens the wine noticeably.

In both cases, never pour beyond the widest point of the glass — for a standard glass, that's around 150 milliliters. With Airén, this restraint matters even more than with Cencibel, because its aromas are naturally quieter and get completely lost in an overfilled glass.