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by Morton Hochstein
New Crystal Barware
Throw away those brandy snifters your grandfather gave you. Stop diluting expensive malt scotch with water. And taste tequila the way it should be, in a glass designed to show the Mexican spirit at its best.
George Riedel, the stemware baron who has convinced wine aficionados that they need special glasses for specific wines, has turned his critical eye and marketing mojo to barware.
His son, Maximilian Riedel, is famed for convincing skeptics that specially designed stemware make wine better. His tasting sessions before skeptics and disbelievers who come out converted are legendary.
 Now he is taking on the Scotch tradition that calls for a touch of water to cut the alcohol and tame the fiery spirit. Riedel says his uniquely fashioned scotch malt glasses, an elongated thistle-shaped bowl with a slightly flared lip sitting on a truncated stem, eliminates the need to cut the dram. The flared lip delivers the spirit onto the tip of the tongue, invoking its smooth elegance at first taste. Alcohol fumes are subdued and the taller, thinner glass shows off the costly drink in a way that no snifter, however dramatic its appearance, ever could. (Editor’s note: The shape also reminds drinkers of Scotland’s Thistle, which was used by the early Kings of Scotland as their Arms of the Realm, and by a number of Scottish clans and families as part of their coats of arms.)
Riedel and a panel of experts and master distillers agreed that the aromas of the scotch were lost in the traditional tumbler, while the brandy balloon emphasized the alcohol at the expense of finesse. Tastings with the new glass showed off  the aromas and accentuated the softness, roundness, and silkiness of expensive malt scotch.
His new glass for brandy says no to the bowl-shaped form historically associated with fine Cognac. Riedel enlisted a master blender from Hennessey Cognac to help create a completely different glass, a slender, tulip-shaped vessel with a turned out rim, which accentuates the fruit, aromas and tastes of cognac, while minimizing volatile alcohol and astringency. The design crafted by Riedel and the expert distiller is now known as the Riedel Vinum Cognac Hennessy Glass.
 Tequila drinkers, those who consume the finer Reposados, Anejos and Reservas, not the mass market variety often lumped into Margueritas, have never had one glass designed for them. Riedel assembled a couple of dozen producers and tequila fanatics for three rounds of tastings, using several designs, seeking a form that would faithfully convey the characteristics of the drink. The end result was a tall-stemmed elegant slender glass, 8 ¼ inches high, holding a little under seven ounces. Mexico’s Consejo Regulador del Tequila has designated the new design as its official tequila glass.
The Cognac and the Single Malt Whisky glass have a manufacturer’s suggested retail cost of $19.90 each and the Tequila glass retails for $9.90.
© May 2008 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
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