Riedel Stemware is Amazing!

Last night I had the pleasure to attend an amazing wine seminar with Georg Riedel. I have always used Riedel stemware simply because I really love the thin crystal and how it feels on my lips as I drink wine. However, I hadn't always been completely convinced that the shape of the glass actually makes that much of a difference in the tasting experience. Most of the time I would just use a standard Vinum series Cabernet glass for most of my tasting.

During this tasting Georg and his team provided us with three different shaped glasses for our comparative tasting. We tasted from the Vinum XL series Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon stems. They provided three wines for us as well which I think were a Arrowood Cabernet Sauvignon, Hartford Court Pinot Noir, and some kind of Aussie Shiraz.

Pretty much what the tasting entailed was to taste each wine out of all three shapes and to notice the differences of how each wine performed both on the nose and on the palate. To be completely honest I was blown away by how each specific shape seemed to completely crush the other competing shapes with the varietal they were specifically designed for. The Pinot Noir smelt and tasted brilliantly out of the Pinot Noir designed wine stem, but when tasted out of the other to shapes it was completely different. In most cases the wines tasted like completely different wines out of the wrong shape.

I'm still slightly oblivious of how the specific technology works and how they find the exact shape that goes the best with each varietal, but Georg hinted at the fact that they had done an amazing amount of trial and error sessions in order to find which shapes complimented each wine perfectly. He also stated that the most important elements in determining how the glass performs are the size of the bowl and the opening at the rim of the glass.

After the event was finished I must say that I was, and still am 100% convinced that using these wine stems with the wines they were specifically designed for dramatically enhances the tasting experience. In Fact, I might have trouble having guests over for wine without having the exact stems I need for each wine. It may sound a bit over the top, but I promise that it makes that much of a difference.

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