Wine Tasting with Georg Riedel
Not so long ago I was at a dinner with a handful of food writers--I was there merely as a food taster--and the fancy stemware from the Austrian firm Riedel came up. One woman extolled the famed Riedel wine tasting experience, a kind of demonstration where one tastes wine out of a variety of Riedel glasses (chardonnay from a special chardonnay glass, cabernet sauvignon from a cab cup, and so on), it tastes and smells much better than usual, and you're forced to realize that you've been drinking your fine pinots out of the wrong glasses for your whole life. I was skeptical, but she told me it was enlightening. Last night at SFMOMA, Riedel honcho, and 11th generation family glass man Georg Riedel hosted just this kind of tasting, and I wasn't going to miss it.
I sat down with Georg, a 40 year veteran of the family concern, before the tasting, and though he was reticent on what precisely makes a certain Riedel glass right for a certain varietal of wine--"We'll talk after the tasting," he kept repeating--he did offer a bit of insight into what he calls Riedel's "instruments to highlight the quality of wine."
Georg Riedel and a Riedel glass. I asked him if he travels with one of his wine glasses and he said that he does bring along a small one, "an SOS version" of the Riedel stuff.
He then told me about how his father, Claus Riedel was the first to make the discovery that particularly shaped glasses serve particular varietals. From the late 1950s onward the company dedicated itself to "wine friendly" glasses with scant attention paid to aesthetics. Riedel was not entirely forthcoming in how his father, and subsequent Riedel glassmakers arrive at a particular shape for a particular varietal, and instead told me that "you must taste it. It is convincing once you have it on your palette. It's the same beverage you're tasting, the only change is the vessel and how that vessel changes your perception of the wine."
The bowl of the Burgundy Grand Cru holds 38 oz of liquid, something like a bottle and a half of wine. When I took the glass home and washed it later that night I could fit my whole fist up to the wrist inside.
Riedel took the podium and commenced a show he must have put on hundreds of times. The jokes were polished as nicely as the $500 decanter in front of him, and he led the tasting with precision and humor. Granted with the goal of showing each of us just how anemic our wine-drinking lives had been before Riedel.
My placemat with the trio of Sommeliers glasses and the pair of "Jokers"--the plastic cup and a run-of-the-mill wineglass.
As we inhaled bouquets and tippled a taste, Georg had us pouring the assembled wines into our various cups. He pointed out that the wonderful aromas of the chardonnay in the Montrachet glass evaporated when sniffed from the plastic cup; that the pinot noir in its proper goblet turned bitter and gruff when taken from the cabernet glass; and that the cabernet was a pale imitation of life when sampled from anything but its rightful glass.
All told, it was quite impressive and Riedel's take on how the three wines changed their shape based on the shape of the glass was spot-on. Though I had lingering doubts about what at times felt like a high-brow exercise in group think. Without Georg telling me what I was experiencing, would I have experienced it? I'll grant that the pinot noir was pretty epic in that pinot noir glass, but would the crowd at large have murmured so disdainfully when drinking it out of the cab glass had Georg not set them up to be disappointed.
Here's the Montrachet glass we used to taste the Ceja Vineyards chardonnay.
Not as good, sure, but sad? And would any of us have so quickly noted where the wine hits our tongues, where the acidity of the pinot resides in our mouths, and just precisely how tannic it seems when drunk from a "wine unfriendly" cup? I certainly don't want to short-shrift old Georg on his expertise in glassmaking and wine drinking. But to what degree was he leading my perceptions, describing them to me in real time so as guide me along his desired sensory path.
I certainly came away thinking highly of the fancy stemware, but couldn't totally shake the feeling that I was drinking right out of Riedel's hand.
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Hi Aaron, I think your last sentence most likely encapsulates accurately the entire experience. I have never used a Riedel glass I'll confess, & I suspect that there's some limited degree of truth to the claims set forth by Riedel. I imagine there might be ten degrees of bedrock truth, and something akin to ninety percent mythology or hype above & beyond that. It would be interesting to conduct the exact same test minus the lecture or pre-conditioning from anyone who stands to benefit financially from the interaction. Just grab a few people off the street & ask them if they have twenty minutes to drink some vino, film them up close & watch their body language, eyes, etc. They might exhibit "thin slicing" as Malcolm Gladwell describes in his books & maybe some conclusions could be drawn from that. I have no doubt Riedel makes a very, very nice wineglass but man they sure are extravagantly expensive especially the hand blown on. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that MOMA in NYC has one on permanent display. I think there are other wineglasses that are much less expensive that probably accomplish the same task, but lets give credit where some credit is due, after all Riedel I believe created a segment where a greater degree of precision & quality is applied to wineglasses & the overall experience of of wine drinking. I heard a story somewhere that Mr. Mondavi was presented with the same experience over in Napa, and he was so astounded that he ordered all of his other wine glasses purged & smashed up. I tend to think that adds unnecessarily to the myth factor and makes me somewhat suspicious I dare say! Cheers.
Thanks for your thoughts, Duncan. Riedel does for sure make a nice wineglass, and Georg told us that story of how after Robert Mondavi had his Riedel tasting he bought their glasses to replace all that he was using in his various properties. I'm not prepared to dismiss Riedel as all marketing--there really was a difference in taste and aroma from glass to glass, but I stand by my reservations as well. What kind of wine glasses do you use, out of curiosity?
I used to believe the Riedel "phenomenon" was all hype, too, until my wife picked up a couple of Riedel pinot noir "tumblers" at a garage sale for $2. I was amazed at how dramatically the glassware affected the taste of a cheap Beaujolais. Out of our dishware-friendly table glasses that I usually grab for a glass of wine with dinner, the wine had very little smell and what I could smell seemed somewhat bland and flat, though it tasted good. Out of the Riedel glasses, wine from the same bottle had a strong bouquet of fruit and some floral aspects. The taste was the same, but the Riedel glasses are really all about the smell immediately before you taste the wine.
This article reminds me of Seth Godin's book All Marketer Are Liars. Have a read and you'll reconsider whether the Riedel glass really does make the wine taste better.
I think that wine makers, if they want to be truly accessible to the huddling masses, should not bother thinking about how fantastic their wine tastes in gorgeous, ridiculously expensive glasses (Mondavi), but focus instead on how it tastes in the cheap ones we all have sitting in our cabinets right now. I actually do believe there is a difference in taste with all types of glasses, but there are fine lines between career, hobby and a waste of time.
I've experienced the taste of wine in different glasses and can vouch that the glass does make a difference. Sometimes just for curiosity we try wines in a couple types of glasses to see what we like best. Maybe not everyone notes the difference, but that is what makes the world go round!
When my brother who belongs to a wine club here in Honolulu showed and told me about his Reidel glasses, I thought this was complete "bull". Not having a sophisticated palate, I hardly could tell the difference compared to regular wine glasses. When the opportunity came for me to buy a set, I said why not. We usually drink the "two-buck chuck" shiraz and we were quite impressed how the Reidel significantly improved the taste. My unsophisticated palate could actually tell the difference. So now my wife and I take our wine glasses with us whenever we go to the beach and enjoy the sunset here in Honolulu.
As a fellow glassmaker,whose company goes back to 1612, may I add a comment. I have tried with a master of Wine, ( Christie's director of Wine), a comparative tasting of four different wines from four different glasses, none were Riedl, incidentally, but were Britsih and European. ...and yes, there was no doubt that certain glasses showed the qualites better than others. We tasted a good Chateau bottled Claret, a good burgundy, a red Chinn from the Loire, and a Ch Ste Michelle Syrah from Washinton State. In my opinon the theory holds true. Certain bowl shapes can emphasise the varietal flavours of certain wines.This was red wines only! But not let us forget that we all have different degrees of tasting ability, ie smakers in myopinion looose a lot of the subtlety, and certain people have a developed and practicised skill of tasting especially a Master of wine. However both I and Christopher indidually marked the four wines in four different glasses, and witout exception we both agreed in order which gass was best for which wine. One glass shape ( and they were all sold as "Fine Wine Glasses" , was " dumb" in all respects, and price varied from reasonable to expensive- though none of the glasss were in what I call the "Stratosphere" price range ie over $75 a stem! But neverthless if you are going to drink a bottle worth $100+ on a regular basis, and an afford the best glass, why not?
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