Steam Your Way to Spot-Free Wine Glasses

Drinking wine is fun — the classy kind of fun — and nothing ruins classy fun like grimy little smudges and spots. If I’m serving wine to friends, family, and/or nemeses, I need my glasses to sparkle, baby. I have a (very specific) reputation to maintain, after all. (I may not be what society thinks of as “classy,” but I am clean.)

How did these smudges get there? I’ll never know, but they must be vanquished, disappeared, and banished from my sight. Even if my guests don’t notice the smudges, I will notice them, and I will spend the evening obsessing, my eyes hyper-focused on glassware when they should be focused on faces and words. Luckily, there is a very easy way to rid your stemware of pesky little spots and grimy finger prints: steam.

This tip comes to us from Food52, but steam is the way most restaurants and bars get their glassware gleaming (though they usually have large-scale methods for steaming a whole bunch at a time). The at-home method is simple: Bring some water to a boil, catch the steam in the glass, and polish the glass with a microfiber cloth:

So, here’s how it goes. Just before your guests arrive, line up your glassware. Turn on your kettle or put some water in a pot to boil. When the water has come to a boil, turn it off. Now, hold each glass by the stem and invert it above the water just enough to get the glass steamed up (if it’s stemless, be careful not to hold it too close to the steaming water). Next, grab a soft, clean microfiber cloth with your free hand and polish away. You’ll know you’re done when no steam remains inside the glass. Repeat on the rest of your glassware and watch ‘em sparkle and shine.

Once the glasses are sparkling, your only challenge is keeping your lipstick off of yours for the remaining portion of the evening. (Lucky for you, I have a tip for that, too.)