Does the Glass Make the Wine?

By Chuck Sudo in Food on May 20, 2008 4:45PM

Last month the Chicagoist food and drink staff gathered at Binny's South Loop for a Riedel stemware seminar led by the current head of the company himself, Georg Riedel. For the better part of two hours, the exuberant Austrian alternately enraptured and berated his attentive audience, preaching the gospel that his Vitis stemware line (vitis being the Latin word for "vine") would make drinking any wine a religious experience. At one point we half-expected Riedel to proclaim, "If Jesus had this stemware at za vedding vere he turned vater into vine, it vould make za vine better!"

This wasn't our first Riedel rodeo but for those whom it was they were overjoyed at the end to walk away from the seminar with what amounted to a $150 set of mismatched stemware that would shatter back into sand if you looked at the glasses the wrong way.

One of the constants of a Riedel seminar is to transfer the wines served from one glass to the next. This brings out different characteristics of the grape based on the long-outdated "tounge map." Riedel doesn't exactly say that. What he and his salespeople tell customers is that the glasses are "fine-tuned" to bring out the best characteristics of the wine for which the wine is intended.

It's all about suggestion.

We'd be lying if we said we didn't notice differences in the way the wines poured at the event lay on the palates after following Riedel's instructions ("Do not drink YET! Swirl."). But one could do the same thing with another line of crystal stemware, some Anchor Hocking or Libbey stemware bought at Crate & Barrel, or even jelly jars of varying size. Studies have never conclusively proven Riedel's claim, but it's never stopped tastemakers and oenophiles like Robert Parker from waxing hyperbole about Riedel stemware.

We'll grant that Riedel stemware is absolutely gorgeous. Outside of trying to impress someone over dinner, we probably won't use them all the time.