You can’t argue with physics, right?
Georg Riedel, the 10th-generation owner of Riedel Crystal, made a rare appearance in Santa Barbara County in December to state his case that physics plays a critical role in the enjoyment of wine.
Santa Barbara Vintners, the region’s vintners association, played host to Riedel, whose family founded the esteemed Austria-based Riedel Crystal company in 1756.
One hundred local winemakers, tasting room and winery workers, and wine writers gathered at Hotel Corque in Solvang to witness and experience one of Riedel’s world-famous comparative glassware tastings.
The passionate Riedel is serious about his product, setting out to prove that wine will display different characteristics when served in a variety of Riedel wine glasses.
“I’m the glassmaker, not the winemaker,” Riedel stated during the introduction to his 90-minute presentation. “My job is actually to translate the message, which is kept in a bottle of wine.”
Each seminar participant sat down to three new Veritas lead crystal wineglasses: Riedel’s lightest and thinnest machine-blown varietal-specific glassware series.
Riedel politely reminded our group to pick up and hold the glasses by the stem, not the bowl.
“This is the least expensive piece of equipment in a winery: a glass. And you will be surprised what a glass does,” Riedel said with confidence.
The first glass was large and tulip-shaped, designed for New World pinot noir; the next glass was egg-shaped and made for Old World syrah; and the third glass was designed for cabernet sauvignon.
Riedel creates wineglasses for the varying degrees of grape skin thickness: thick-skinned grapes (cabernet sauvignon), medium-skinned (syrah), and thin-skinned (pinot noir).
He shared that Riedel’s syrah glass is the most versatile of his glasses because the vast majority of the world’s wine grapes are considered medium-skinned.
In 1958, Claus Riedel, Georg’s father, unveiled a new concept in wineglass making.
“He was the very first in history to create wine-friendly glasses,” Riedel explained. “Which means, before Claus Riedel, beautiful glasses were made, very precious glasses … but they had no relation with the wine itself.”
The expert Austrian glassmakers at Riedel focus on three things when designing a glass: size, shape, and rim diameter.
“These three parameters have an incredible impact on how they will release aromas, intensity of aromas, how they will trigger and influence ultimately the perception,” Riedel said. “I cannot change wine; this is impossible.”
The opening of a glass impacts the flow of liquid to different parts of the palate, which trigger the perception of wine.
We began our glassware education by drinking cold water from each wineglass to demonstrate how the liquid flows to different areas of the mouth depending on the engineering of the glass.
“You will be surprised! You will feel the water very much on different parts of your palate,” Riedel said. “I can’t wait to show you this!”
With the first glass, the water flowed onto the front of the tongue. The second glass, with a narrow opening, delivered the water to the back of the palate. The water flowed across the whole palate with the third glass.
“Dealing with physics means that I can 100 percent explain to you why,” Riedel said. “It only depends on the rim diameter.”
“Glass No. 2 is the most narrow, which means in order to initiate flow you must move your head further back, which obviously has an impact on the speed of which the liquid comes and where it’s positioning itself,” he explained.
Each seminar participant was given samples of three local wines in plastic cups: Brewer-Clifton pinot noir, Zaca Mesa syrah, and Westerly cabernet sauvignon.
Riedel instructed us to pour the pinot noir into all three wineglasses.
After swirling the glass and sticking our nose into the bowl of the glass to take a good sniff, we discovered that the wine’s aroma actually differed from glass to glass. Each glass shape enhanced a different component of the wine.
The demonstration continued with tasting the pinot noir from each glass. The cabernet sauvignon glass elevated the green components in the wine, and the syrah glass brought out the salty, mineral influence in the wine. But Riedel’s Veritas pinot noir glass beautifully showcased and expressed the fruit, complexity, and balance of this pinot noir, the 2012 Brewer Clifton Machado Vineyard pinot noir, a major component of the 2012 Brewer Clifton Sta. Rita Hills pinot noir that was recently named the No. 8 wine in the world by Wine Spectator.
Then, this fine wine’s co-creator, Steve Clifton, stood up, sharing his amazement with the tasting exercise.
“Nothing less than remarkable! Every aspect that you defined was spot on,” Clifton told Riedel in front of the group.
Not surprisingly, Zaca Mesa’s syrah tasted best in Riedel’s syrah wine glass, and Westerly’s cabernet sauvignon was at its finest in the cabernet sauvignon glass.
So does glass matter? I’m a believer!
Give it a try at home: Smell and taste the same wine in a variety of wineglass shapes. Decide for yourself which shape best showcases your favorite wine—or leave it to the experts at Riedel.
“We have fooled Masters of Wine, sommeliers, everybody in the wine industry, by just pouring the same wine in different glasses,” Riedel professed. “Because ‘the translator’ has such an impact on the perception of the wine that you would think it was a very different wine.”
Sun wine and food writer Wendy Thies Sell is a regular contributor to the Eats column. Contact her at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 8-15, 2015.