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"The finest glasses for both technical and hedonistic purposes are those made by the Riedel company. The effect of these glasses is profound. I cannot emphasize enough what a difference they make."  Robert M. Parker Jr. of The Wine Advocate Riedel Crystal Huge Selection Great Prices @ 800wine.com Riedel Crystal Huge Selection Great Prices @ 800wine.com Featured Stemware Riedel Crystal   Riedel’s guiding principle: The content determines the shape. The glasses are designed to emphasize a wine’s harmony, not faults. Riedel has always viewed the wine glass as an instrument to bring together: the personality of the wine, smell, taste, appearance (including the beauty of the object). To fully appreciate the different grape varieties and the subtle characteristics of individual wines, it is essential to have a glass which has a shape fine-tuned for the purpose. The shape is responsible for the quality and intensity of the bouquet and the flow of the wine. The initial contact point depends on the shape and volume of the glass, the diameter of the rim, and its finish (whether it is a cut and polished or rolled edge) as well as the thickness of the crystal. As you put your wine glass to your lips, your taste buds are on the alert. The wine flow is directed onto the appropriate taste zones of your palate and consequently leads to different taste pictures. Once your tongue is in contact with the wine three messages are transmitted at the same time: temperature, texture and taste. The size of a glass is important, affecting the quality and intensity of aromas. The breathing space has to be chosen according to the “personality” of the wine or spirit. Red wines require large glasses, white wines medium-sized glasses and spirits, small ones (to emphasize the fruit character and not the alcohol). Professor Claus J. Riedel was the first designer to recognize that the bouquet, taste, balance and finish of wines are affected by the shape of the glass from which they are drunk. Forty years ago he began his pioneering work to create stemware that would match and complement different wines and spirits. In the late 1950s, Riedel started to produce glasses which at that time were a design revolution. Thin-blown, unadorned, reducing the design to its essence: Bowl, stem, base. Working with experienced tasters, Riedel discovered that wine enjoyed from his glasses showed more depth and better balance than when served in other glasses. Claus J. Riedel laid the groundwork for stemware which was functional as well as beautiful, and made according to the Bauhaus design principle: form follows function. In 1961 a revolutionary concept was introduced, when the Riedel catalogue featured the first line of wine glasses created in different sizes and shapes. Before this, conventional stemware had used a single basic bowl shape, with only the size varying depending on use. The concept was illustrated to perfection with the introduction of the Sommeliers series in 1973, which achieved worldwide recognition. A glass was born that turns a sip into a celebration – a wine’s best friend – fine-tuned to match the grape! We invite you to share this fascinating and unique experience.   Reidel History The Venetians brought back the knowledge of glass making from the Near East around 1.000 A.D. The knowledge of producing glass spread slowly towards the northern part of Europe, searching for energy, critical to the melting of glass. Wood was the source, causing a glassmaker migration to the forests.  Due to this migration, a glass culture developed in Bohemia in the 17th century. The Riedel story begins in 1756 in Bohemia and continues right down to the united Europe of today, taking in on the way some of the most dramatic events in European history. The Riedel family has been in the glass business for 300 years, with 11 generations keeping the family business intact. Claus Josef Riedel, ninth generation Riedel, was born in 1925 in Polaun, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic.  He died March 17, 2004 in Genoa, Italy, while visiting his first wife's family. Over 45 years ago, Professor Claus Riedel began experimenting with different glasses for different wines. He determined that the exact same wine – from the same bottle served at the exact same temperature at the same time and under the same conditions – tasted noticeably different when tasted from differently shaped and sized glasses. He spent the following 16 years studying the physics of wine delivery to the mouth and taste buds, experimenting with glass configurations and wines of different regions and maturities. He noticed that depending on glasses’ sizes, shapes, thickness, and rim diameter and thinness, they imparted different organoleptic information, not only transmitting specific characteristics but greater or lesser harmony, depth, balance and complexity. He attracted some supporters but generally the world scoffed at his philosophy. Told that no housewife would purchase his glasses, he responded, “Aesthetics and excellence are my criteria, not mere convenience”. In 1958, he created the Sommeliers Burgundy Grand Cru stem, still the world’s largest wine glass (37-ounce capacity), which, initially, was dubbed ‘the goldfish bowl’ but in 1960 was placed in the permanent design collection of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art which, today, contains an additional 126 Riedel stems. Also in 1958, he won the Grand Prix for his Brussels collection at the Brussels World Exhibition, and, in 1959, his Exquisit Bordeaux glass was named the ‘Most Beautiful Glass in the World’ by New York’s Corning Museum of Glass. In 1965, in recognition of his revolutionary work, the Austrian Government conferred the honorary title of Professor on Claus Riedel. As a teenager he was conscripted into the German army and shipped out to fight the Italian partisans in Tuscany and Liguria, where he was captured by the Americans and held in a prisoner-of-war camp in San Vincenzo, outside Pisa, for ten months. In January 1946 he was loaded on a train for ‘repatriation’ in Bad Aibling, Germany. Instead, as the train slowed to pass through the Mount Isel tunnel near Innsbruck, Austria, 20 miles north of the Italian border, he jumped. Luck brought him to nearby Wattens, home of Swarovksi Crystal, where founder Daniel Swarovski – who began his career as a trainee with Claus’ great-grandfather, sixth generation, Josef Riedel – financed his studies at the University of Innsbruck. In 1947, Claus returned to Italy and married Adia Rosa Parodi, mother of Georg Riedel, with whom he fell in love while in Liguria, and worked as an engineer at factories in Italy and Germany, honing his glassmaking skills. In 1955, when Claus' father Walter was freed by the Soviets after 10 years captivity, father and son, again with Swarovski’s help, purchased the bankrupt Tiroler Glashütte in the town of Kufstein, Austria, and resumed their lives and the family’s glass making tradition. Just as there are dynasties of instrument makers whose names are inseparably associated with pianos and violins, so the production of fine glassware has been linked to the name of Riedel for over 300 years. Eleven generations of the Riedel family, including artists, scientists, industrialists and innovators – driven by their abilities and ambitions – have worked on some of the world’s finest crystal designs and have been responsible for countless innovations in both the art and the science of glass making.