Wine Folly Tested: The Best Red Wine Glasses

Hey, what's up? It's Madeline Paquette. I am a certified sommelier and co-founder of winefolly.com and I also wrote this awesome book, Wine Folly, Magnum Edition, The Master Guide. Today, okay, so I've been looking forward to doing this video for forever. This is a showdown, I guess, of some of the world's top wine glasses and I'm testing them all with the exact same type of wine and I'm trying to find what is the best. And it turns out, what's interesting, the thing that I've learned from studying glasses for so long is there's basically a glass for everyone. We're all a little bit different and that's probably why there's so many different shapes and sizes on the market. But let's get into that. Let's dive into these glasses and answer a few questions about what makes a glass great so you know and you're empowered and when you look at glassware, you can kind of make your own mind up on whatever you choose. So what do I look for in a glass? And it's pretty simple. It's got to make the wine taste great. It has to be quality built. It should be usable. So how is the cleaning situation? Does it store in most cabinet spaces? Can I stick my hand in and polish it pretty easily? And then how durable is this glass? Is it going to survive or is it going to break? So these are the basic things I look for and it gets more complicated. But I have a glass, a demo glass. This is what I would say my basic plus wine glass. This is by Scott Zwiesel. This is called the Triton Pure Cabernet glass. You can find it on the market for about $14 to $16 per glass. I think I've seen it at like Pottery Barn. This glass, however, as beautiful as it is, is very, very different than these other glasses and I'll talk a little bit about why. First things first, you know this is a crystal glass. These are all crystal glasses. The reason why we like crystal more than standard glass is crystal is glass plus minerals. It doesn't have to be lead. Originally it was leaded based crystal and they do have some lead based crystal out there, but most folks are using lead-free crystal, which is usually zinc or magnesium plus silica, which makes glass. All right, so you've got your glass. You're going to be looking at quality of manufacturing and you're going to look in a few specific places. First thing, is the glass made with multiple pieces? Is the stem connected to the base and then connected to the glass? So there's basically two units and you can see that this one is. Is the stem pressed? And this one definitely is. I can actually feel a seam on the stem of this glass right here and then I look at the rim of the glass. This is how thin they can spin the glass and I can see that this one's got a little bit of a lip and the reason why you don't want a super huge lip on super high-end glasses is because the lip makes the glass more present in your mouth when you're tasting it. It creates, you basically want to drink wine out of air, like you want to be floating in space and be like sucking the wine out of the air while still maintaining that shape that sort of collects the aroma. So these are some of the things I look for in quality. And then finally, the last thing I look at is the quality of the bowl. I'm looking at sort of the ribbing that happens, that might happen. How smooth did they make it? How quickly was this manufactured? And this one, you know, for $14 is a pretty good deal. I'd say you could probably get this glass for a lot cheaper. I think they have a really good markup on this particular glass. For comparison's sake, I have old standard here. This is my Restaurant Series Riddell Extreme. I think it's called a Riddell Extreme Cabernet or Bordeaux Glass. Massive bowl, but very, very thin lip. I think it's leaded crystal, and that's where they can make it so thin right here. And it's really, really chunky and firm and solid. It's got such a big mouth, I can stick my hand in there, which is handy when polishing glasses. This is old standby. I've had these for at least eight years and I love them, but they're definitely a big, a little bit of a monster. When you get into the high-end glasses, things get more delicate. Alice Fearing said hummingbird bones, and I think that's a great way of describing what happens to some of these glasses, these stems. They have such thin stems that if you have big hands, you know, you want to hold it by the base. That is the safe place to hold these glasses because the stems are so thin, they're almost unmanageable to hold, but at the same rate, they're beautiful and they're stunning. So let's move on to the high-end glasses. I'm going to put good old Triton off to the side here, and we'll start getting into the details of what these glasses are. Okay, so I'm going to start with the one on your right. This is a new glass to market new in 2018. It is a partnership between Jancis Robinson and Richard Brendan. It is crystal glass, it is made in Austria, hand-blown, and it is called the one, I guess, one glass to rule them all, a universal glass that retails for $56 a stem. Next one over, this is the Zalto Denk Art Universal, very classic, famous glass with very austere lines. It is $59 a stem, also hand-blown, made in Austria. Next one over, this is the only one made in Germany of the bunch. This is a Zwiesel. Zwiesel is a very classic glass manufacturer in Germany. This is called the Zwiesel 1872 Select series, and this is the Riesling Grand Cru glass. I can't find this one available in the U.S., but I have found it in Europe for 38 euros, or that translates to $43 a stem. And then our next one over, these are actually both from the same producer. They look very similar, as that's because they are. These are both made by Gabrielle Glass. Gabrielle Glass was designed by a Swiss guy, and it is made in Austria. This one is a hand-blown, this is their gold edition glass, retails for $62 a stem. And then this one next to it's interesting, it is same shape and everything, but it is machine-made, and it is just under $30 a stem. So you might be wondering why I picked these glasses and not other glasses on the market, and I will say I picked these specifically because they're supposed to be universal glasses. If you want to know more about wine glasses, leave a comment for me, and I'll definitely keep track of those. All right, so let's get started. I want to do a smell test with them. I'm going to be tasting a Pinot Noir. I think this is a great wine to test with because it's not, it's a red, but it's aromatic, so it can kind of have more floral notes like a white wine. So this is my buddy Jeff Kruth, his bottle of Lost and Found from 2014 Vintage. This is a great way to test this wine. All right, I'm going to start with the Jancis, Robinson, Richard, Brendan collaboration, the one glass, and let's give this a sniff. You know, what I noticed right off the bat with this glass is a much smaller diameter opening, so we'll see how that performs. Okay, so this is interesting. So I'm thinking Pinot Noir. I'm thinking red fruit flavors, floral notes, that sort of thing. This glass is interesting because at first sniff, I don't get a lot of red fruits. I just get a lot of almost alcohol aseptic notes, and if I move my nose back from the glass a bit, I actually start to smell the individual aromas, and then when I put my nose in the glass, it starts to get a little richer and more intense and more like minerally and lean, so that's interesting. Could be because of the wine. I don't know. We'll find out. Let's give the Zalto a sniff. Same glass, same pour. I did three ounces in every glass. This one right off the bat, a lot bigger opening, a lot bigger diameter opening, and the funny thing about Zalto, I've seen sales guys do this, is they'll take it, and they'll squeeze it, and it's pliable, and this is sort of part of their sales tactic. It's like, hey, you know, it's actually pretty resilient glass, and it's true, you know, they use these in restaurants and stuff like that, so it does hold up to a little bit of punishment for as thin and, you know, hummingbird legs as it has. Okay, very, very different. Way more rich fruit flavors come out of the glass first, so think raspberry, strawberry, sauce. Much more robust flavors in the fruit spectrum, more richer, sweeter, almost more cooked in the same wine. You know what else I get, too? I also smell this funny, like, almost like dried leaves and allspice together. Not a bad wine. Smells good. You know what it also has? It does have that same septic note that I was getting in the last wine, obviously, because it's the same wine, but it's much more on the finish of the nose. Okay, so that's the Zalto. Let's do this Riesling Grand Cru glass by Zwiesel 1872. So this one has a small opening also, but it's still, my nose is a lot farther, just like the Zalto, it's a lot farther from the liquid, so it smells more fruity. I get more, maybe, sweet raspberry sauce, and then that septic note really flies into my nose right after that saucy note. All right, the last two we can do together because they're essentially the same shape, so they should smell the same. I'll test that out. One's more expensive, this guy, and this is the cheapie $30 glass. Cheapie for fancy. It's still $30 a glass. Okay, wow. Also very different. This one has a larger diameter opening. Reminds me a lot of the Zalto in the opening, but my distance isn't as far. I'm a little bit closer to it. Has this interesting sort of curvy shape to it. So what's crazy about this is the flavors come in a little bit sequentially to my nose, which makes it kind of easy to pick out flavors. I get tart raspberries, sort of sweet strawberries, hibiscus, like floral hibiscus, and almost like those rose pasty candies. On the top side of this glass, if I smell from the top, I get more of that septic note we were talking about in these other glasses. Again, I'm nitpicking this wine. This wine smells delicious. It's almost more minerally in this glass. It almost smells more like a mineral note than a negative. Let me just swirl it a bunch. It smells virtually the same. Yeah. Yeah, that smells the same. So these, I think because the shapes is the same, smell also the same to me. I don't notice any particular nose smells differently. All right. So that's the smell. Which one's my favorite? Which one do I like the best? So I'm going to say everyone's different. My nose is big. I've got a pretty strong sniffer. But so these ones with the smaller diameter rim did not, for me, they did not perform well with this wine because it just burned my nose. I liked the Gabrielle glass and the Zalto a little bit more. So these two Gabrielle glasses and this Zalto seem to perform better for this particular wine. All right. Next up, let's do the taste test. So with the taste test, it's all about how the rim of this glass touches my lips and how that taste comes into my mouth. This is really, really focused palate like it comes into my palate like all at once and then it spreads out and hits everything sort of like if you imagine like turning your hose really tight and going, you know, so it sprays everywhere. That's kind of how it feels like it comes into my palate because it has a small diameter opening. I would say tannin seems slightly reduced. I don't know if it has to do with this glass shape or this wine. We'll find out with the next one. But I feel the acidity in this wine. That is what is notable, like, bam, acidity. I taste acidity. I taste the tart fruit flavors. All right, Zalto, number two, larger diameter. So that should really affect our experience. OK, and this glass is very different. The glass hits the sides of my lips like it's wide enough that it comes in here and wine is actually coming in from the sides of my mouth. And that experience hits the tannin sort of on the sides of my tongue. So I taste more of the tannin profile early on. And the wine itself hits more evenly on my palate. It seems to work well with this glass overall. Again, we're talking with taste. It's all about texture. Texture wise, I felt this was more even than the first glass. Less about acidity, more about a little bit more about tannin. This next glass is the Zwiesel 1872 Select, the Riesling Grand Cru glass. Also has a small diameter. I have my theory, but let's see what we get. It's different. It tastes different than the first one because instead of like a single point explosion like Jancis's glass, it comes more like a fan onto my palate and that hits a bunch of different taste receptors all at once. So to me, it's more towards fruit and it doesn't focus. I don't taste as much tannin immediately as I do with the Zalto, but it's not quite as pointilized as the Jancis glass. Finally, we have the Gabrielle glass. This is the gold edition. I'm going to taste out of both of these glasses because they are, they do have a different rim width and I want to see how that much that affects the taste. Okay, so this one definitely has more of that all-over palate effect similar to the Zalto glass where kind of everything hits you all at once. You get a little bit of that tannin play. I'd sense, maybe because my nose is closer to the wine when I'm tasting it and I'm getting a lot of those aromatics, but I sense a lot more of that fresh fruit note versus the stewy fruit note that I got in the Zalto, which does kind of affect your perception of taste. So perceptively, it felt lighter bodied, even though it's the same wine. All right, last glass with the rim. You know, for as much as I was bitching and moaning about rims, it's not that much different. It's a little different though. It's a very subtle difference between this rim thickness. I think if, you know, I was using a glass with a really thick bead around the rim, I would be upset, but this is so subtle. This one kind of cups into my mouth. It kind of cuts in there, not painfully so, but like I can feel it almost like you would setting like a tongue depressor down. It kind of comes in, whereas this one is more rounded. It kind of like rolls in and I can feel that when I'm tasting, I can feel it sort of rolling into position, if you will. But other than that, as far as the profile goes, it's the same shape. It's the same everything. It feels, the wine feels essentially the same on my palate, if not a little thicker because it's a thicker glass. I don't even know why I'm saying that, but that's what I'm tasting right now. All right, so taste. Which one did I like the best? You know, if I had to choose my favorites, I'm going to pick this one and this one. The Zalto Dank Art Universal Glass and the Gabrielle Glass Standard, thank God I like this one so much, Wine Folly Edition Glass, and here's why. If you're going to spend top dollar for universal glass, you're going to be really happy with the Zalto. It's going to taste, it's going to make red wines taste delicious like red wines should. On the other hand, if you're looking for a glass that seems to over perform for the price, I'm shocked at how well this machine crafted glass did against the other guys. I mean, comparatively, there are some issues. You can see some slight ribbing in the manufacturing process, which is a downside. You know, when you're drinking fine wine, you want to see a perfect crystal clear glass, which these other ones have. But when I'm really thinking about what I like when I'm enjoying wine, it's less about how it looks and more about how it tastes and feels on my palate, which is why I think this wine glass does so well. What surprised me was that Zalto really does seem to live up to its name. I'm always hunting for that perfect glass and I had my doubts about Zalto because it's so popular. Why does everybody like what's so popular? But I have to say they knocked it out of the park with this glass. The other glasses I have my hopes for, this is an excellent glass, but for double the price, I would almost just get the cheaper one unless I'm really, really caring about the crystal clarity. With Giancis's glass, I wanted to love this glass and I bet I would love this glass on Riesling. I just have a feeling this is going to overperform with sparkling wines, with Riesling, with Sherry, with Bizarre Wines. I think she did a lot to try to make a glass that's going to do well with the weird stuff because she has really unique tastes. So I'm open-minded here, but these two are my favorites and I'm very lucky that we, shameless plug here, we actually sell this glass on our website. They're $29.99 on our site, which is really awesome. I bought them before I did this test, so I'm very thankful right about now. Anyway, if you like what we're doing at Wine Folly, definitely subscribe and until next time, peace out.