#355 Riedel Glasses - Functional beauty

Glasses.  Everyone has their own favourite type of glassware, and usually, it comes down to one of two things.  Aesthetics or function.  A lot of wine enthusiasts have tulip shaped glasses, or tasting glasses, that are wide at the bottom and thin at the top, allowing the aromas to concentrate on your nose.  The ISO tasting glass is a perfect example of a glass that has a function.  Then you have the ornate glasses, or the cut Edinburgh crystal glasses that your granny uses.  Big and chunky glasses, flared outwards to the top, or the stumpy glass shape akin to a tennis ball cut in half and stuck on a stem.  These glasses are for appearances only.

But what if you actually want to maximise the potential of your wine over a dinner party?  What glass do you use? One that is stylish or one that will show off the wine?  Well, without this meaning to sound like an advertising advert for a glass company, you could try Riedel.

I've liked Riedel for years.  I own several of their beautiful sommelier series glasses, and usually use their Restaurant Chianti glass when I'm drinking anything from Champagne to Bordeaux, but I've never had systematically experimented and compared the same wine in different glasses until today.

I attended a Riedel masterclass, conducted by Maximilian Riedel, whose grandfather Joseph was the first man to realise that wine tastes different in different glasses, and who laid the foundations for the company we know today.  We were presented with four Riedel glasses and a plastic beaker, and we tried four wines in these glasses

The first Riedel glass was the O Series stemless Sauvignon Blanc/Riesling glass.  We were tasting a German Riesling in this glass, and it showed a little bit of honey, some pear and melon coming through with a little bit of lime.  The concept of this glass is to bring out the fruit to balance ith the acid, and it succeeds.  There is a crispness in the wine, with some subtle sweetness coming through with a little bit of creamy texture.  We then poured the plastic beaker - an often used tool for tasting in American wine shops and a similar shape to the crystal glasses of the 1950s - you expect the nose to close down as all of the aromas are escaping.  This it does, but what you don't realise until you try it, is how much the palate changes too.  The acid becomes more prominent and the wine is very sour.  the soft, subtle sweet flavours are totally gone and the wine is stripped bare.  The wine is ruined.


We moved onto the second glass, a Vinum Extreme Chardonnay glass, with an Californian Chardonnay.  This was a diamond shaped glass, with a wide waist and a bigger bowl with a much larger rim.  The bigger bowl is needed with oaked wines, giving the wine a larger surface area and enabling it to breathe, and the rim has to be bigger due to the wine having a lot more power to show and a smaller rim would concentrate the aromas too much.  In this glass, the wine had aromas of apple and mango with some lovely grapefruit coming off.  There is oak, but not over the top.  It was a very fruit driven wine, with an oily palate, balanced with the minerality.  There are cedar flavours, a bit of tobacco and then a little spike of alcohol.  We then put the Chardonnay into the first glass, and it loses most of its nose, with the oak being killed off and the fruit dampened.  The palate too is bitter, with a hint of vodka coming through and far much more alcohol.  All the depth this wine had is gone.  But it got worse when the wine went into the plastic tumbler.  Not a single aroma came off, and the palate was flat, dull and with no fruit.  A wine ruined by a plastic beaker!

The third glass was the Restaurant XL Pinot Noir glass.  We were told that this is not only good for red Pinot Noir, but also Champagnes with a high percentage of Pinot in the blend, and Dom Perignon has determined that this style of glass is perfect for showing off their wine.  We tried a Sonoma County Pinot Noir in this glass, and the flared rim, or 'acidity pumper' as Maximilian called it, and gives the wine lift.  The aroma was of cherry and strawberries coated in a little white pepper, with lovely crisp red fruit aromas.  The palate had soft, balanced tannins, you don't notice any alcohol, and has flavours of cranberries, and a nice acid cleaning up your palate, leading onto a gentle, sweeter red fruit finish.  Moving to the Chardonnay glass, the wine becomes sweeter, more confected, and also muted.  There is a baked fruit element coming through and dried cranberries too.  It has a thinner palate, very linear and bitter, with all the richer elements of the palate gone.  In an effort to wreck the wine some more, it too went into the plastic beaker, and it just killed the nose and the palate became a green, bitter mess.


Finally was an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon, in the XL Cabernet Glass.  The wine showed aromas of black olives, brambles with a minty note too.  The palate had a chocolate and coffee flavour with soft tannins.  This glass calmed down a big, powerful wine, showing the more subtle, floral notes with the vanilla oak acting as a seasoning rather than a dominant flavour.  The same cannot be said when the wine went into the Pinot Noir glass, where the nose was only about the creamy, oaky aromas and then sweeter, more confected aromas.  It became more stereotypically Aussie with the Pinot Glass.  Then, moving to the Chardonnay glass, you only got burnt vanilla and charred wood on the nose with no fruit, not even the confected from the Pinot glass.  There were harsh tannins, and unpleasant leathery dark flavours.  Finally, into the plastic cup, it became a savoury, tannic, bitter, green abomination.

Most people just drink from one style of glass, so when assessing new wines, I'll still use a tulip shaped glass as it gives a more relevant tasting for my customers as I will try the wine in a glass similar to the one they will use.  However, when I am drinking my wines I am singing from the Riedel hymn sheet.  To adapt the analogy from Maximilian Riedel, you can play 18 holes of golf with one club but it won't be a good round.  You need a bag of clubs to play well, and the world of wine is the same - you need a number of glasses that enable you to get the best from your wines and Riedel are the Titleist of the glass world.