Gormet Magazine - Article on Glassware

Riedel makes good wine glasses in a variety of price ranges. However I find some of their hype laughable. To me, they would have do do proper double blind controlled tasting tests before I pay much attention to their hype. To avoid bias, this probably would require using blind or blindfolded tasters and having a helper hold the glasses to the tasters lips so the taster could not feel the shape of the glass.

I consider Baccarat a far superior crystal maker to Riedel. All of my good glasses are Baccarat, except for a few antiques. At least when I bought my Baccarat many years ago, they were using about 35% lead compared to about 25% that Riedel and many others use. This gives a crystal with a higher refractive index and more sparkle. From what I have read, lead is not an issue in glasses for serving wine. It might be a borderline issue for strong spirits stored in a high lead content decanter for many months or years. This was the subject of a thread in this group a year or so ago. Also, when I bought my Baccarat, they destroyed all imperfect glasses and did not sell seconds. Many other crystal makers degrade their reputation by selling seconds. Baccarat can provide crystal of a very wide range in style to satisfy the likes of a wide variety of people. The downside is that Baccarat has become extremely expensive since I bought mine. Of course I have more ordinary glasses for everyday. You can buy glasses of the Riedel shapes at a fraction of the Riedel price for everyday use. I have some made in China that look decent and work quite well.

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Please post the article's title and page number on which it starts, so we can grab a copy from the library's microfilm.

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Shattered Myths by Daniel Zwerdling, Gourmet, August 2004, p. 72.

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It is titled "Shattered Myths" by Daniel Zwerdling on page 72 of the August 2004 issue of Gourmet Magazine, a Conde Nast publication, phone US (212)286-2860 in New York.

The article bolstered my suspicion about the power of suggestion and wine: if someone tells you X, then you are likely to perceive X. So, I still think this business that the shape of the glass affects the quality of the taste/smell is plain old marketing bull$hit.

For example, according to the article, the glass pushers predicate the shape effect on the "tongue" map, while acknowledging that this is a debunked idea.

I also liked the discussion about how the "proof" was supposed to have been provided by an American University study. Turns out to be an undergraduate research project which actually concluded the opposite, but apparently a journalist misunderstood the findings; however, the initial--and incorrect--story got replicated by other media.

Get it through your library. Definitely worth the effort to get it and to read it, especially before you go to a glass manufacturer's presentation on how shape affects taste. I am looking forward to going to one of them in which they let me ask questions.

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I should have said: "I also liked the discussion about how the "proof" was supposed to have been provided by an American university (U. of Tennessee) study." Note, there is an "American University" in Washington, DC.

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Shape clearly has an influence on how well a wine presents in a glass, but, like you, I don't believe the impact of shape to be subtle. There are basically glasses that work and those that don't. If you're spending more than $3/stem for glasses that work, you're generally paying for something other than functional qualities.

Dana

Yes, I read the Gourmet article, and the conclusions are just about what I expected. I concluded long ago that the claims made by certain glass makers were a lot of hot air with no scientific basis. Even the one proper double blind scientific experiment arranged for by a major glass maker failed to prove that the shape of his glasses made any important difference.

One thing that can influence the perception of the wine is the weight of the bowl of the glass. For example, you can pour cool, fairly young, cellar-temperature red wine into both a very heavy cut crystal glass and a paper-thin one. with both glasses starting out at warm room temperature. The temperature of the wine is hardly changed in the ultra thin glass and the wine may appear a bit thin and tannic without much bouquet. However the very heavy glass at warm room temperature very rapidly warms the wine considerably, and it may appear much better balanced with much more bouquet. On the other hand, if one uses a chilled sweet white wine at the proper serving temperature, it may show best in the ultra thin glass that does not change the temperature of it much. In the heavy crystal glass, the white rapidly warms and shows less well. The moral of this story is that if you use very heavy crystal, it should be at about the correct temperature for the wine, and the wine also shold be at the correct temperature. For paper-thin crystal, you do not have to worry as much about the temperature of the glass, but the wine temperature still is important. A clever sales person probably could "prove" that either their heavy cut crystal or paper-thin glass is best by taking advantage of the above. The same sorts of tricks can be done on the ear also. It is a well known that if you want to sell a loudspeaker system that gives the most profit, you have it playing just a bit louder than the comparison speaker system with less profit margin. It must be just a slight increase that is not obvious. By far the most people will pick the speaker system that is playing slightly louder when the quality of the two speaker systems is not very different.

I have drunk wine form very ornate glasses from the 1800s. They usually work well. You cannot see the wine in some of them, but then you can always judge the color of the wine in a small tasting glass used to judge if the opened bottle of wine is fit to serve. I usually like to do this, even when using clear glasses for serving. Old or new, there are a few shapes that can cause practical problems. A glass that is very small and too full makes it very difficult to swirl the wine. Likewise, for a very tall and narrow flute. On the other extreme wine is difficult to swirl in a saucer shaped glass without making a mess. I have found that a truly superior wine makes itself very apparent without a lot of fuss about glass shape, size, etc. You do not have to try hard to know that it is great. The problems come with young wines that are not ready and poor, thin wines that you have to struggle with to make out much fruit or complexity at all. If all else fails, you can pour some wine in a large brandy sniffer, seal the top with your hand or some plastic film, and shake it very well. Then you may be able to smell a trace of something if it is there at all. But such extreme measures are for evaluaton of new wines that one might want to buy to age - not for wines to be served with the dinner.

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Let me first state that I sell wine retail, along with Riedel and Spiegelau crystal. That being said....

While I agree that there is a good bit of "play" in the marketing aspect of both companies (especially if you look at the 30+ different Vinum series Riedel stems), I have yet to see anyone ever NOT prefer the Riedel stem for a particular wine when compared to any other. For example, pour a taste of a cabernet (or cabernet based wine) into your current favorite glass, a Riedel Vinum Bordeaux stem and a Riedel Vinum Pinot Noir (or any other Vinum series stem that you care to try --- I recommend the Pinot because they are similarly sized) glass. Try each one and think about the wine and how you experience it. The other requirement is that you pour the same wine, from the same bottle, in all three (or how many ever) glasses so you truely see the difference.

We contact a regular Riedel seminar in which there are 5 wines tasted: a sparkling, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir and a Cabernet. I have personally conducted more than 20 of these seminars (average 18-20 people) over the past 3 years and ever single person has always preferred the correct Riedel stem for a given wine.

I have also simply poured people wine in a couple of different stems and asked them if they preferred the particular wine from any particular glass. Many times, the people had never heard of Riedel (or Spiegelau) and yet they too have always said they preferred it from the correct stem.

Now the other side of this coin is that I too was very skeptical when I first heard this and so I can understand where you are coming from. And I still don't know that I find very much, if any variation in a lot of the stems (again, there's 30+ Vinum series and many of these are very close to each other in size, shape, etc.). For everyday drinking, we use the following stems (all from the Vinum series): Sparkling/Champagne, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Bordeaux/Cabernet/Merlot and Burgundy/Pinot Noir. We also use the Zinfandel/Chianti stem when we travel or go out.

And yes, I am partial to Riedel over Spiegelau simply because that was the first ones that I used. I believe you can use either with the same results equally well.

The final, bottom line (in my opinion) is that you really should just enjoy your wine, along with some good food and friends, in whatever particular stemware you happen to prefer. That's why it's made.

Cheers, Gary

Salut/Hi Leo Bueno,

le/on Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:48:51 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

That's what I thought until I went to the Riedel factory with my own wine and tasted their glasses. I have no doubt at all that the winew showed differently when drunk from their Sommelier range Burgundy and Bordeaux glasses. What is also interesting - and unexpected - was that when tasting down the ranges in the same region (Bordeaux glasses while drinking an Austrian Cab Sauv) the wine showed substantially the same but less so.

Leo, you've seen enough of my posts to know that I'm pretty skeptical about claims for magic effect from glasses, decanters, magnets and so on, so I can only say what we found on tasting. No one was more surprised than I.

Please clarify this observation.

As Cwdjrx _ explained in a previous post, do you think the temperature effect as opposed to the *shape* may have been at work?

As I mentioned before, the Gourmet article indicated that the Riedel people attribute the difference, in part, to how the wine is precisely delivered to the tongue, i.e., on the old tongue map concept--which I understand to be scientific bunk. This appeal to pseudo-science indicates marketing mullarky.

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I don't think so.

As Gary/CabFan and Ian have said: Why don't you simply attend a Riedel glass tasting?

M. (having had his first Riedel glass tasting exactly 21 years ago)

The writer of the Gourmet article did attend a Riedel comparison tasting, I believe somewhere on the US East coast. Such tastings may vary somewhat. However the flaws were that the speaker made comments about how poorly some wines being tasted showed in glasses other than Riedel, and the tasters could see the glasses they were using. Results under such condtions are scientifically meaningless. The very elaborate, proper scientific comparison that was arranged for comparison of Riedel glases, I believe in France, was properly designed, blind, the tasters could not see the glasses, and the glasses were presented to the lips in a precisely controlled manner. There was statistically insignificant correlation in identification of service of wine in the Riedel glasses rather than in some rather quite different glasses. As for the tongue maps, this is nothing new. It has long been known that we taste sweet, sour, bitter, and salty on different areas of the tongue. Unless you have a bad case of arthritis of the tongue, it is easy to move it around to contact the wine in many different ways, as wine tasters were doing long before the Riedel tongue maps. I am surprised that Riedel has not made a super glass designed for an individual. You would have the size of your nose and the distance from your nostrils to lips measured. Then a special glass would be made just for your at perhaps $US1000 per glass. There is nothing wrong with the Riedel glasses, but there is plenty wrong with the hype, in my opinion. Most people seem to buy the 30 oz Riedel Bordeaux Sommelier rather than the

Riedel(connection with the current one unknown to me) was making glasses in central Europe in the 1800s along with Moser and several others. Some of the old Riedel glasses sometimes appear at auction. However they never had the great fame of Moser or Baccarat in France. Moser probably is the king of crystal in the long run, but it perhaps is not quite what it was in the late 1800s. Baccarat probably is now the world's best crystal, and they have a huge selection of types for every taste. I have not checked lately, but when I bought my Baccarat glasses many years ago they were using about a 35% lead crystal in contrast to the 24% used by Riedel and many others today. This gives glass with a very high refractive index to makes it sparkle well. Baccarat can supply you with a large, thin, plain wine glass if you wish. They can also supply you with the crystal they designed for the last Tsar of Russia, some of the most elaborate multi-layered colored and cut glass that the world has ever known. When I bought my Baccarat, they would not lower their standards by making any lower line glasses using machine or partial machine work. They destroyed all imperfect glasses rather than selling them to avoid having any imperfect glasses on the market. Hopefully they still do. Unfortunately the price of Baccarat has now become extreme. For those with a taste for very elaborate cut glass, Saint Louis makes high quality crystal and still has a fairly large following even though their crystal is very expensive.

For everyday glasses, there are glasses in the Riedel shapes made in China and elsewhere that can be had for much less than Riedel. They may not be lead crystal, but then many people do not bring out the silver and best china for everyday meals either.

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Are Riedel glass tastings in any sense blind?

No. Wine tastings can be, glass tastings for obvious reasons not.

M.

One can imagine a blind glass tasting as being a somewhat shattering experience, eh?

pavane

Gass tastings can be blind in exactly the same sense that most wine tastings can - you are not told what glass you are drinking from.

Of course, if you know the glassware range that would not help. For many others (me included) if they were not told they would not know.

I would not trust even my own judgement if I were presented with a Reidel salesperson with the perfect glass and asked to compare it with an inferior one. Either I would believe what I was told or (more likely in my case) I would over-compensate for any suggestion.

But this was exactly what was reported here: Even without knowing people invariable chose the appropriate Riedel stem.

M.

Unfortunately I have discarded my copy of Gourmet concering this subject. If I remember the details of the scientific blind tasting correctly, the people tasting wore bindfolds. The glasses were moved into position by machine so the tasters could not feel the shape of the glass. Such a test, if done properly, can never prove there is no slight difference in taste for some people. However thay can strongly indicate that any such differences are extremely small for most people. Of course several repeat experiments would be nice to improve the statistics. However I doubt if Riedel would be willing to pay for these. By the way, blind people often make outstanding testers for senses other than sight. Many years ago a person I know had to set up a test for levels at which various compounds in diesel exaust became noticable. His best sniffers were a blind couple.

It is very easy to underestimate how much interactions with other people can influence your thoughts on a hidden level. A classic experiment in social psychology would place several people in a dark room and shine a tiny dot of light on the wall. After a certain time, the dot seems to jump for most people. By planting people in the room who would say they saw the dot move earlier than the average, others would report an earlier time that they saw the dot move, on the average.

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I see nothing in this thread to suggest that anyone prefers Riedel in a tasting that is in any sense blind.

Cwdjrx _ reported a blind study where *no* statisitically significant result was found: "There was statistically insignificant correlation in identification of service of wine in the Riedel glasses rather than in some rather quite different glasses."

Ian and CabFan expressed a preference for Riedel, but presumably know what they are drinking out of. I do not deny their experience, but it's not going to persuade me to upgrade my glassware.