Wine: Riedel Wine Glass

[Mike Buckley]

The Riedel Wine Glass Company is an Austrian firm that began making handblown crystal in 1756. Beginning in the 1950s, it began making wineglasses that are designed to enhance enjoyment of specific styles of wines. As an example, the size, shape and thickness of the bowl, stem and base made for enjoying a red Bordeaux is different from the wineglass made for enjoying a white Burgundy. The concept has been expanded so much that the company now makes different wineglasses according to the grape species used to make the wine. It even makes two different wineglasses for enjoying a particular wine made in two different styles, such as a shiraz made in the old world and new world styles. Its catalog now includes a stemless glass designed to enjoy -- you may never have guessed this -- a Coca Cola (tm). Are beer mugs next?

Personally, I've never bought into the concept that a wine glass has to be so specifically designed to enjoy a particular wine but some people swear by it. If you agree with the Riedel concept, you better be prepared to pay a lot because I know of no other brand that is so expensive. Indeed, many of their wine glasses cost over USD $100 per glass and that's for a plain, fully transparent glass that has no decorative ornamentation of any kind.

This wine glass was given to me as a promotional item at a public wine event, though I don't remember what it was. (EDIT: My wife explained that it was actually given to her by her employer because they understandably had no use for it.) The glass is very small, though I realize you can't determine that from the image. I kept it because I wanted to photograph the famous brand.

Setup
The camera, not the wineglass, is tilted. The background is black velvet, though even if it had been a white card the results would have been the same. A diffuser much larger than the background is immediately behind it. A small continuous-light lamp shining from behind the diffuser and background toward the subject and camera outlines the shape of the glass in bright tones. A flash light on the left lights the label. A white reflector on the right side held at a 45-degree angle to the wineglass creates the reflection on that side. Moving the reflector throughout the exposure creates the gradient on the top left side of the reflection.

[bnnrcn]

IMO it is a very suitable image to use as a commercial The label (?) looks very nice with contrasty colors. I also like the tones of grey in the image.

[LePetomane]

Mike, although not a wine consumer I enjoy your photos of wine bottles and other things related.

[Wavelength]

Wow; this is really classic

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to all three of you!

although not a wine consumer I enjoy your photos of wine bottles and other things related.

That's very gratifying, Paul. Thanks for the nod.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done, I don't know about the shape of the glass but I believe how you hold the glass does give you a few minutes more of chill; although I "dew" like to use the dew to remove sticky sauce from my fingertips.

[John 2]

That's nicely composed and processed Mike. I don't buy into their justification of their concept either although I will go so far as to acknowledge that any wine tastes better in glass than in a paper cup. I like tradition and the shape of wine glasses suggested for different wines as tradition is OK by me but I suspect that the practical benefit doesn't go beyond a wider glass to let a red breathe and a narrow glass to maintain temperature more easily and to prolong any effervescence. But I am certainly no expert so educate me.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to John (Shadowman) and John (John 2)! In response to both of your posts:

It's impossible for me to buy into Riedel's insistence that the shape of the wine glass has everything to do with the enjoyment of wine considering that they sell both stemmed and stemless glasses to be used with wine. Traditional thought was that the stemless glass was to be used to enjoy drinks such as brandy at room temperature or higher because the cupping of the hand around the glass keeps it warm. The corollary is that the stemmed glass allows holding the glass by the stem or base, which prevents the hand from warming up the bowl when enjoying red and white wines at below room temperature.

I'm no physicist, but my guess is that the narrower and smaller the bowl, the greater the tendency for the temperature of the liquid to change to room temperature.

If I remember correctly, when Riedel first began making wine glasses that are specific to the type of wine being enjoyed, their marketing information mentioned that each glass was designed to deposit the wine on pertinent areas of the tongue depending on the wine being enjoyed. At the time, science was telling us that various receptors on the tongue such as those that pick up sweet, salty and bitter tastes are only in particular areas of the tongue depending on the receptor being considered. Science now tells us that is not true, at least not to the extent previously thought. So, I'm not surprised that Riedel is no longer using that science to justify their reasoning that the shape of the glass makes such a big difference when tasting the wine.

I was also skeptical that a particular glass could reliably deposit the wine on the same parts of everybody's tongue considering that no two tongues are exactly the same shape or size.

To be clear, I think all this stuff Riedel pushes is nothing more than marketing foo foo.

[mugge]

Mike, quite superb. I enjoy wine anyhow. A cheap Italian red should best be enjoyed, however, in a broken mug sitting in front of a country barn on a three legged stool.
Cheers Ole