I burn my way through roughly 9,000 wines each year, and taste the majority of those in my home. (Just ask the seething guys who work the recycling truck that serves my neighborhood.) As you might guess, I also burn through a lot of glassware over time. A certain amount of breakage comes with the territory when one drinks for a living. Spits, I mean, spits.
So, I need to find glassware that offers the hard-to-find combination of very high performance with affordability. In recent years, I’ve used Riedel “Vinum” series glasses, as well as the Spiegelau “Vino Grande” stems. Both are good, but the Riedels are really too expensive at $18 – $20 per glass. The Spiegelaus are priced much more reasonably at about $10, but they really aren’t competitive with the Riedels in terms of quality. They are unsatisfyingly light, and have a visible seam running along the side of the stem, which is embarrassing when you’ve invited the Queen over for tea and Shiraz.
Feel a Goldilocks moment coming? Yep, I’ve recently found a line of glasses that is just right, hitting the happy medium between the contending lines. The “In Vino Veritas” series from the Austrian producer “Glass & Co” is priced like Spiegelau but performs like Riedel. The material is brilliantly clear, and the stems are perfectly seamless. As with manually blown glasses, the bowl and stem are produced from a single piece of material rather than pieced together, resulting in greater durability. The line includes 14 different shapes that are sized to particular wine and beverage types, and every one that I’ve tried performs very well at a remarkably low price.
To view the glasses, go to www.glass-co.com
An American importer located in Virginia is Select Wines, 703-631-8100.
1