Well said and there is a mouth feel to the rim of the glass that is also important. Not too thick nor rolled....
Dude, I was at Goodwill today and there was a whole lot of options there, even some crystal....none of which were over $4 but I don't know if they were actually for scotch or not. I'd hit there if I were you.
Hit a milestone today and finally found a cow horn tumbler. Unfortunately the guy only had one or I'd have bought three more to make a set. I plan to use it for warmed up (not hot) Glug which I make every Christmas for sipping over the coming winter.
I would stick to the idea of finding a few nice glasses that you like. But. I would keep the Scotch in it's original bottle. 1st it's air tight; 2nd it's a classy bottle; 3rd if you're going to leave it in a fancy glass bottle for any length of time you have to be careful that it's not a Lead Crystal. The alcohol , over time will leach the lead out of the glass(I've read).
While that's true. The amount of lead which leeches from crystal is almost negligible unless you're a hardcore alcoholic which will finish the decanter on a weekly basis, in which case the dementia you'd be feeling would be a result of the alcohol and not the lead poisoning.
I have complete a full set of Gorham Lady Anne whiskey tumblers for mine. Got them on sale a few years ago.
Try Anchor Hocking tumblers (anchorhocking.com). They look nice, are made in the USA, inexpensive, and widely available. I sometimes use a cognac glass when drinking scotch neat instead of on the rocks. It seems to work well enough. IMHO, a lot of the specialized drinkware is just a way to separate consumers from their $$$. The price of most of these glasses lends credence to this suspicion.
The lead thing wasn't frequent use... We know that that would be ok-) . It was Infrequent use! If it just sat there for a long period of time there might be a problem with it being leached out into the drink.
Mine are lead crystal and I've never worried about it. Then again, I don't use the decanter for storage. I have a hard time believing lead would leach from the crystal as it should (in theory) be a very small quantity and chemically bound within the silica substrate. I would be much more concerned with PCBs et al from plastics than minute traces of lead in crystal vessels.
We have nice crystal. But my husband insists on drinking (wine, scotch or whatever) from the Flinstones glass. He calls that "the good crystal". Go figure.
I have some nice Waterford crystal tumblers that my late mother in law gave me. They may not be the thing for nosing the single malts I drink but they are all class as well as having sentimental value, I share a scotch with my father in law in them when he visits. +1 to the goodwill/op shop/ second hand store. Often single crystal glasses are giving away when a set is not complete. For a couple of dollars you can often find a paid of nice tumblers.
