A Glass Act

After the "big splash" when bottles of champagne crashed out of his refrigerator, Georg Riedel was ready to try again to prove to me – and readers of The Wine Spectator – that the right glass can make drinking a better experience. 

Champagne has inspired so many songs, sayings and bons mots that it’s only natural artists and engineers would be eager to find the best, most beautiful way to contain it. That is, to design a drinking glass worthy of the world’s most glamorous wine.

So it was that crystal-maker Georg Riedel put his team to work. But would the champagne glass he designed actually make the bubbly taste better? That was the question I was in Kufstein, Austria, Riedel’s home, to answer.

It was the 1980s and the idea of such specialized glassware was new, but Riedel was hoping to convince the American market it was worth trying.

On the table, Georg had set up six different champagne glasses and he began filling them with the Taittinger champagne I had chosen for the “glass tasting.”

There was nearly every shape imaginable – except the proverbial high-heeled shoe some dandies had supposedly swiped from a famous – and beautiful – actress to toast her wonderful acting. That’s what they said, although they seemed to be more interested in her other skills. Drinking from a shoe like that, however romantic, can be a practical nightmare. I know because one time my husband Don actually tried it. The occasion was another tasting – this one at Champagne Piper Heidsieck which had produced a red glass slipper for sipping bubbly. It turned out to be better for spilling.

Happily I only faced real drinking glasses.

The first was that festive and decadent coupe – the kind you can stack into a pyramid to create a champagne fountain for a party. Classicists might whisper behind their hands that the original was thought to be molded on the breast of Helen of Troy, but those of us who live in France know it was Marie-Antoinette’s breast that inspired the coupe. And the story behind it is not very racy. After her husband, Louis XVI, gave her the Queen’s Dairy Temple, he had four porcelain glasses made for her to drink milk from her cows. And, yes, her breast was the mold for them. Only one remains today and it belongs to the Antique Porcelain Company of London and New York.

But think about it. Those coupes are really for drinking milk! That sort of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it? So it's better to think of them as something to pair with champagne.

The big problem with coupes is that you lose the bubbles rather quickly. They are perfect, though, for dipping your cookie or those dry pink biscuits the Champenois love to serve with champagne.       

Next up at my tasting with Riedel was a glass shaped something like a jam jar. The champagne was okay, not real effervescent, but it worked better than the coupe. Still somewhat disappointing, though.

There were also a couple of rather oddly-shaped glasses, including one that had a design on the inside of the glass, put there to enhance the bubbles, I was told. It did. In fact, all I got was bubbles. I couldn’t really taste any champagne.

Then I got to one that had the shape of someone with hands on hips – a narrow opening, with the crystal shooting out from it at a sharp angle before slanting in again to the stem. This one was fun, very attractive, too. “It’s designed by a friend of ours,” Georg said. “It’s part of series that looks marvelous on the table because all of the glasses stand at the same height.” The bubbles kept rising up from the bottom and the bouquet swelled out. Both tickled my nose. Not bad, I thought. Quirky, but I liked drinking from it.

Then, the Riedel glass. A beautiful flute with a stem that was just the right length to hold easily and not let sweaty fingers warm the wine. It felt right, too – a nice balance in the hand. Easy, comfortable drinking.

And the champagne? Well, the bubbles didn’t stop. They rose up continuously from the bottom and brought with them a big whiff of bouquet that just made you want to start sipping. Dare I say I felt like I had tasted the stars?

Riedel was right, I concluded. The right glass does make a difference, does make everything better. In the years since, his company has expanded and is now manufacturing glasses for nearly every kind of wine and grape variety. Glasses for young Burgundy and old Burgundy, glasses tailored for different kinds of Bordeaux, sweet wines, you name it.

But if you are a teetotaler and prefer sticking to water, well, Riedel has now designed glasses precisely for that.