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The Second Glass
Rating Details »
Category: Print Media [Edit]
Neighborhood: Financial District50 Congress St
Ste 615
(between Exchange St & Post Office Sq)
Boston, MA 02109
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9 reviews for The Second Glass
The Second Glass was a fabulous idea and I wish I had come up with it. It's a business that promotes the knowledge of affordable wine through wine tastings (which is how I most frequently come into contact with it), emails, and I hear a magazine, though I've never seen it.
What I really like about the Second Glass folks is their focus on being unpretentious about wine. Here's the deal - wine is great, and we can all enjoy it, and it's that simple. We just all have to figure out what we like. I go to their crash courses in Davis Square, which are always a generous amount of wine for $10 ($11 online) along with information about what we're drinking, which inevitably gets more interesting as more glasses are poured. Now, at eight wines a tasting, I am well on my way to knowing myself and my favorite types of wine.
Yesterday I went to Wine Riot, organanized by the Second Glass, in which I had 4 hours to sample 250 wines. And a lot of those wines were fantastic. It was a great opportunity to try everything, ask the vendors questions and have quite a bit of fun (especially in the photo booth) And yes I did learn stuff! But no, not really towards the end...
In short - very fun, and informative. Makes me feel good about myself. And who wouldn't give that five stars?!
Here's my praise for The Second Glass: It (they) made me drink wine. More, they made me upgrade from Charles Shaw into cabernet francs and sherries, sparkling rosés and carmeneres. They made me swirl and sniff.
The magazine is great, but better are the crash courses and uber-event Wine Riot. The courses are a lot of knowledge (and a lot of drinks) packed into each session, which at $10 is a steal. I don't know how either the magazine or event plays to real wine aficionados -- they definitely pitch towards a newbie crowd -- but for a neophyte, they're unbeatable, especially since everything (or at least just about everything) they review is under $20. Pick up one of their bottles, scratch off the price tag, and judge everybody else at your next fancy dinner, because for a magazine for younguns who don't know wine from kool-aid and vodka, the taste here is impeccable and wide-flung. Underpriced obscure grapes almost always trump big labels from France or California.
So, pick up a copy, or better yet, go to an event. I can't imagine you won't be hooked immediately.
I don't understand wine. My knowledge of it primarily comes from Billy Joel songs about there being red, white, and something called rose, which you can apparently have if you like. And all of these are acceptable at an Italian restaurant where people commiserate about failed marriages and Sears purchases.
I digress. I recently won VIP tickets to Wine Riot, The Second Glass' major event at Cyclorama. With a far more experienced friend in tow (Dave M.), I came to the event worried that I would have no idea what I was doing. Instead, I got the opportunity to experience wine in a no pressure situation, allowing me to learn far more than I would have at a traditional wine tasting.
However, my experience may have been particularly good because of the VIP event status (I did have a chance to go to and talk to many of the distributors/vineyard-types). What gives The Second Glass that last push up to 5 stars is the amount of information they have on good, affordable wine. While I've primarily experienced this in email form, it's still a lot of great information. With picks for under $20, and suggestions for different situations and events, it's an incredible resource.
Overall, The Second Glass does what it's supposed to do: make the world of wine a lot less frightening. By the end of Wine Riot, I could judge which of three New Zealand Cabarnet Sauvignons had the strongest taste versus the more subtle ones. While I'll always be partial to beer, it's nice to know the little things for situations where wine comes up.
I love The Second Glass! I'm a huge wino, and like the people who work at The Second Glass, I'm not all about being pretentious and snooty about it. Wine is fun (and not to mention delicious) and I support anyone who thinks the same.
I volunteered to help at Wine Riot! a few weeks ago, and I had a blast! I got to meet with awesome Wine Representatives, try wine from all over the world, and I got to ask stupid questions without anyone judging me. Also, the people who work at The Second Glass are so down to earth. They work and play hard, and they are all such positive people. If you want to learn about wine, these are the best people you could possibly learn from. Wonderful publication run by great people.
I don't even drink and I"m a fan of the Second Glass. True, once upon a time, I considered myself a wine snob so the Second Glass, for me, is a fun way to indulge that former interest.
In addition to the print publication Tyler from Second Glass also writes a really fantastic column in the Weekly Dig. While I don't imbibe I firmly believe that wine is one of the best special occasion gifts/investments to pass on to the truly special lovelies in my life.
A free wine magazine written by young people in Boston - a nice find. I think this is a great idea for mere plebians like me who like wine but don't have the budget, the advanced age and the snobbery to handle normal wine magazines. Hey - they had a feature on how best to spray champagne on your friends - I doubt you'd see that in Wine Spectator.
I got my copy through my friend who does their photos (inside link disclaimer!) but I think you can pick up copies in Trident bookstore and some liquor stores around town. There was a useful ratings scheme for the wine indicating which ones would be best to take to house parties and which to take to dinners and dates. Kind of like a cheat-sheet.
Annoyingly there's only one issue (EDIT: 2 now) so far but the website seems to get updated frequently. I guess you can't complain too much if it's for free and tells you how to open a champagne bottle with a sword.
Thanks to these guys (the magazine is written, published, and all that by friends of mine; consider this your disclaimer) I now know infinitely more about wine than I did mere months ago. Admittedly, I had zero knowledge of wine before, but now I've got ...much much more than zero!
It's a great local wine magazine aimed towards the younger crowd of winos, so all the reviews and article are on topics, bars, shops, and bottles that are actually within the purview of the young Bostonite. You should be able to find copies in wine/liquor shops around town, and probably some copies lying around in convenient places like on the T. It's free and it's full of great information that you just might find useful. So why not check it out?
I actually don't like or drink wine that much (minus a few eventful evenings with a cheap resisling).
But I like The Second Glass!
We stock it in my restaurant and people often grab because it's free and it's something new. The covers are always interesting looking and you can read the articles without 20 pages of ads falling on you.
It's also great that it's done by some local Boston folks, who I know work really really hard.
Whether you're a wine connoisseur, a fledgling wine-drinker that has yet to learn more about the world of wine, or you just know that you like to enjoy a good glass of fermented grape juice every now and then, The Second Glass is an excellent publication for perusal and knowledge-gaining.
It's free, it's fun, it's interesting and it's useful. What more could you want? I love the fact that it's run by a bunch of young people, since this allows for a lot of energy and eliminates any sense of snobbery. And since I know some the staff, I can vouch for that too! Which brings me to my second good point about this publication - I love how it promotes the idea that you don't have to be a snooty, stodgy old crone that sneers at 'silly, clueless young things' to be able to enjoy good wine. Instead, it shows that you can enjoy wine at any level from newbie to expert, still including those people on a lower budget. Very cool!
I do wish they could gain more of a presence around the city but obviously, they'd want that too. Considering they're relatively new, they do pretty well, and they're already available in a bunch of places like Bauer Wine & Spirits on Newbury, and Trident Booksellers & Cafe. And they don't just write about wine - they write about a variety of things from gastropubs to sangria recipes.
One of my favourite sections is their "How To" section, which you can see easily if you go to their nifty little website. How to de-rubberize your wine with a penny, how to choose the right stemware, how to taste and serve wine properly (your very own cheat-sheet articles), as Tom E. said: how to open a champagne bottles with a sword, and 'how to be the biggest badass at your New Year's Party.' How can you not chuckle at that? Aside from being fun to read, they've got great recommendations too: your own handy-dandy guides to being a beloved guest at dinner parties and the like, I suspect. Just the other night, I enjoyed a wonderful bottle of an Argentinean red, recommended by none other than The Second Glass. And it was a success with the party, as expected. To top it all off, from time to time they also sponsor events with great fund-raising groups like the On Your Feet Project. I haven't yet made it to one, but they're very tempting and I certainly hope to sometime.
