Maximilian Riedel knows his wine glasses are the kind you don’t want to drop. Riedel, the 268-year-old Austrian family company of which he is the 11th generation managing director, prices them anywhere between £10 and £120 a pop. And yet there’s barely an upscale restaurant that doesn’t use Riedel. That may come down to its very particular pitch.
Maximilian’s grandfather not only revolutionised the wine glass business by shifting the perception of what was considered top-flight from heavy cut crystal to super-thin, lightweight, almost Bauhausian elegance, he also insisted that the shape of the wine-glass could improve enjoyment of the specific contents. A certain configuration, he argued, allowed the wine to breath, but contained the aroma within the glass; it delivered the wine to the right part of your palate to maximise not just flavour but what oenophiles like to call ‘mouthfeel’. This is glassware as a tool for better drinking.
“Actually the texture of a drink, its length, every aspect of the way you experience it can be improved by the glass,” Maxmilian Riedel insists. “And since there are some 1200 red wine grapes alone, and we’ve covered maybe 10% of them, we have a long way to go.” It’s also an idea that, over the last decade, he has translated for other tipples too: glasses specific in their delivery style for different spirits, for different kinds of cocktails and craft beers - one such glass has been designed to help the effervescence of the beer renew itself, allowing it to keep its head for longer - even for Nespresso coffee, for Coca-Cola and for water.
Riedel appreciates that the idea can sound far-fetched - he has tried but not yet convinced a university to conduct a strictly scientific investigation of the theory - and can only say that it’s convincing in the experience. That’s why he likes to get hands on, running workshops around the world for anyone who wants to discover the difference. “And for many people they’re a real ‘wow’ experience, when they understand how a glass can make such a difference,” he says. “I can’t prove it - people just have to put their nose and their palate to the test and decide for themselves”.
For the skeptics, there’s still the look of Riedel’s glasses: it was Maximilian Riedel who pioneered the now terribly fashionable stemless wineglass after observing the habit of its residents to hold a wine glass by the bowl and not the stem. Serious wine fans might shudder at the very idea - the point of the stem isn’t just fancy, it’s to prevent the wine warming unnecessarily through contact with the hand. But that hasn’t stopped Riedel making the widely imitated idea into another best-seller.