Chris Lara, formerly of Crush, is now head sommelier at Matt’s in the Market, where he regularly creates knock-out wine parings with Chef Chester Gerl’s rustic dishes. He knows a thing or two about wine glasses.

So let’s ask him a stupid question about them.

Chris, why are wine glasses losing their legs?

Every time I go out these days someone is serving me syrahs and sauv blancs in squat glass bowls. For me—especially with champagne flutes—it takes some of the fun out of wine drinking. Thoughts?

The reason wine glasses have stems is so we don’t warm the contents with our body heat, (something we want to do with brandy or cognac in a snifter). Holding wine by the bowl or cradling it will warm whites to much, and heat reds. Also, most wines like air, and stemmed wine glasses provide it and even regulate how much air gets in.

So then serving wine from stemless glasses is just wrong?

Well, “when in Rome," as the saying goes. I was in a hip bar in Vegas a couple of years ago and we were having Champagne at $28 a glass out of stemless flutes! But this was what that bar was going after. It just fit.

Taking a young cabernet from Napa Valley and swirling its contents around and around only helps to evolve that cab. You could still do this in a stemless glass, it’s just the heat that you need to worry about. Keep in mind too that a restaurant might choose stemless glasses for cost-cutting purposes. Wine glasses can wreak havoc on a budget, stemless glasses break less.

Ah, the bottom line. That I can understand. So how do I know this “hip” restaurant I’m in is serving me the appropriate stemless glass?

Look for small slender bowls for whites, larger, rounder bowls for light-skinned reds (pinot noir, nebbiolo), and larger, taller bowls for deep-skinned reds (cabs, syrah). Champagne should be in a slender tall flute. Most wines that are appropriate to serve in stemless glasses are youthful, easy-going wines. The kind you drink every day.

Got it. But one last thing: what do you think of serving wine in juice glasses? Because I think it’s the saddest thing in the world.

Rustic juice glasses were the way to drink wine for so long. Imagine grandmother making a farm fresh dinner and Uncle running down to fetch a beautiful wine crafted by the family. You ate and drank, life was magical. There was no call for a Bordeaux glass or aromatic tulip.

In the past 80 or 90 years we have stepped from just drinking wine to appreciating its every nuance. Wine glasses haven’t just come along for the ride, they’ve driven the revolution.