
Which is more important, the wine or the glass you drink it from? There is no glass in the world that can transform a bad wine, but wine drinkers are increasingly willing to dip into the kid's college fund to invest in good stemware.
Would you pay $20 for a single piece of wine stemware, custom-designed for just one type of wine? Would you pay $25? Would you pay $100 for the silly monster you see at left, which holds 13 bottles?

Wine glasses can be cheap or expensive, silly (like these) or serious (keep reading). But what should you expect from a "tasting vessel"? Let me answer this question with a story (don't I always?)
The Playing Field: The Hospitality center of a new and impressive Okanagan Valley tasting facility. It is 1997.
The Players: A group of 20 wine geeks touring the rapidly emerging B.C. wine country.
The Objective: (As explained by the Winemaker) "Help us analyze each of the four white wines in front of you by identifying their aromatic and flavor profiles."
And with that the geeks were off like horses from the gate, eager to see who could identify the most subtle nuance of aroma and flavor. After about eight minutes the Winemaker asked for our comments on each wine...
Now, traveling wine geeks do not tend to be stingy with opinions. True to form, our group confidently offered insights into nuance of aromas and flavors, getting into polite debates over whose observations were most keen and accurate. Our discussion ran quickly down this road, oblivious to the warning sign that read "The Emperor Has No Clothes."
You see, all four wines were identical. The differences in the aromas and tastes we detected were made possible by the glass the wine was in:
- A Libbey wine glass (such as you might buy at Target for about $1 each),
- A rimmed glass commonly found in tasting rooms at the time (about $4 each),
- An INAO tasting glass (about $5 each), and
- A Riedel glass (about $10) designed specifically for the wine we drank (a Gewürztraminer).
Talk about a great way to make a point while humbling a roomful of wine geeks! Despite an initial round of embarrassment, the differences we detected were real, either emphasized or suppressed by the glass that delivered the wine to our nose and mouth. Though the difference between glasses was visually obvious from the beginning of this exercise, it was easily explained by the Winemaker prior to our tasting - "we selected the glass that best suited each wine."
Afterward, the Winemaker eased our bruised egos by admitting his Riedel rep had performed the same test for him, and that is why his Tasting Room had switched to their more expensive stemware. Riedel is a family-owned crystal company from Austria. They have been producing fine crystal for 11 generations, but only recently (~25 years ago) researched and pioneered the concept that each variety of wine benefits from a wine glass uniquely shaped to emphasize the wines aroma and to deliver the wine to the part of the tongue best suited to experience its varietal characteristics.
The event I've described took place a decade ago, when Riedel's strategy was to train the wine world about their "
functional wine glass" - thin, rimless, custom-shaped, crystal. I'd say the strategy worked - not only did we select Riedel for the stemware in our wine bar, it is also our preferred stemware at home.
Cheers!
Dave the Wine Merchant
Toll Free, 866-746-7293
Today's Quote: "
Keep nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris