Harnessing the gift-giving season, Riedel, the wine glass company, brought eager wine tasters the gift of good wine and better glasses on Dec. 15.
In partnership with Miele Appliance Co., Riedel led the 40-some people present through a comparative tasting of the world’s four most consumed grape varietals — Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon — at Miele’s South Brunswick headquarters on Route 1.
Riedel, an Austrian-based company, has been in business since 1756, when it began by making mirrors, vases and other glassware. In 1956, Claus Riedel began making varietal-specific stemware.
Since then, the company has produced more than 250 wine-specific glasses, as well as a variety of fine crystal products.
The goal for the night, according to Riedel’s Julio Ruiz, the man leading the tasting for the night, was to show how different glasses, created specifically for different wines, affected the taste of each wine. Ruiz added that all five senses would be utilized throughout the course of the night.
To do so, participants were given a set of Riedel Vitis series wine glasses (“vitis” is Latin for “vine”) as well as a plastic cup to use.
The Vitis glasses, standing about a foot tall each with their pulled stems and large bowls, towered over the inch-tall, squat plastic cups — more fitting for condiments than anything — clearly delineating the differences to come before any wines were even tasted.
The tasting began with a Riesling. Picking up the first glass and holding it up for all to see, Ruiz addressed the audience.
“It’s very pointy, like an arrow. If you point it away from you, almost like it’s going to spill, you notice it is very narrow,” Ruiz said.
The shape of the glass, he continued, was scientifically designed to transport the wine to the proper area of the tongue, employing the optimal taste buds. For a sweeter wine like the Riesling, the narrow, pointy glass would deliver the wine to the tip of the tongue, where the sweet taste buds are located.
The other wines, Ruiz said, would fall onto the other parts of the tongue, depending on the flavor that needs to be brought to the forefront: bitterness could be tasted toward the back of the tongue and acidity and tannins are best tasted on the sides of the tongue. Tannins are organic compounds found in the skins and stems of grapes that add to the mouth-feel of wines, especially reds.
Ruiz then urged the crowd to swirl the wine, saying that swirling the wine allows for the true aromas to come out. Swirling also allows the wine to become balanced after sitting in place. After swirling, the tasters finally got to jump into the tasting, getting their first smell of wine.
“Go ahead and put your noses in there. Start snorkeling, as Maximilian Riedel would say,” Ruiz laughed, referring to the CEO of Riedel Crystal America.
“Smell the wine. It’s beautiful, it’s crisp. Very refreshing,” he added.
As the crowd was told finally to take a sip, Ruiz made note of where the wine hit the tongue and the temperature of the wine.
White wines, he said, are optimally served between 50 and 60 degrees, while reds should be served between 60 and 70 degrees, he said.
“Anything too cold or too warm will unbalance it,” he said.
After tasting the Riesling out of the proper glass, the wine was then poured into the plastic cup, the “joker.” The difference was nothing short of stunning.
Whereas the bouquet of fruity and floral flourished in the Riedel glass, the plastic cup gave up nothing, not even the slightest hint that the contents were wine.
The reason for this, Ruiz said, was not that the cup was made of plastic, but that the plastic cup flared out, letting the alcohol and the aromas escape, leaving the tasters with a less-than-appetizing liquid in their cup.
Ruiz asked everyone to sniff the now-empty Riesling glass. The scent, even without wine, was still redolent.
Between wines, Ruiz talked briefly about people’s general opinions of wines after a first taste.
“You notice the first time you drink [a wine] it is like the first time you’re meeting somebody. You either like them or you don’t. The same thing is with wine,” Ruiz joked.
He then asked how many people would have liked the Riesling if they had tasted the wine out of the plastic cup first.
When no one raised their hands and nodded assent, Ruiz moved on to the next wine, Chardonnay.
A deep, buttery yellow, the Chardonnay sat in a glass that had a wide bowl and wide opening, reminiscent of many popular red wine glasses.
When smelled, the wine gave off hints of oak — the reason for its rich color—and of vanilla. Ruiz made the taster cognizant of where the wine hit the palate when sipped. The glass directed the wine to the center of the tongue, where it then moved to the sides.
Buttery and smooth, the Chardonnay left a pleasant and mellow aftertaste in the mouth. The joker cup was again used to show the difference in flavors. Bitterness reigned on second sip.
“Maximilian says he loves the Chardonnay diet because when you drink chardonnay out of the wrong glass you don’t want to eat anything,” Ruiz said as spit out the second sip.
The tasters were then asked to pour the Chardonnay into the Riesling glass. The scent emanating was rich in alcohol to the point of being overpowering.
The smaller Riesling glass mouth, Ruiz said, is not conducive to drinking Chardonnay because it does not allow for the proper amount of oak and other scents to evaporate. Instead, the drinker is left with something almost too rich and definitely too powerful.
“Anything you can smell that is too much right away — you’re probably drinking out of the wrong glass. You want a balanced wine glass,” Ruiz said.
Before moving on to the red wines, Ruiz made sure to check on the audience.
“How’s everybody doing? A lot warmer than you were a few minutes ago?” he said as he prepared to introduce the Pinot Noir.
Holding up the deep ruby Pinot Noir, Ruiz showed the audience how the Chardonnay glass and the Pinot Noir were made from the same mold. The only difference, he said, was that the Pinot Noir was three-quarters of an inch taller.
While not that much of a difference, on first look, the extra height allowed for the Pinot Noir to access different taste buds, leading to a completely different experience.
Instead of drying out the mouth, the Pinot Noir, when sniffed and drunk from the right glass, refreshed the palate, calling to mind fresh cherries and strawberries.
Out of the similar Chardonnay glass, the wine, while not terrible, had a stronger alcohol scent, ruling out the possibility of sweet cherry bliss.
At this point, the audience realized the futility in attempting to taste anything but bad wine from the plastic cup. They remained quiet when Ruiz asked if anyone still wanted to try drinking from the joker cup.
The final wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, was also accompanied with a lesson in decanting wines.
Decanting was a process originally used to separate the sediment from the rest of the wine. Now that the winemaking process has eliminated much of the sediment found in bottled wine, decanting is used to aerate the wine, enhancing the flavor in the same way that swirling the wine in the glass would.
Decanting wine, Ruiz said was ex- tremely important for all wines.
“Not only for red wines, but also white wines and champagne, especially for younger wines — 2006 and later,” he said.
For the tasting, Ruiz used the Riedel Eve decanter. The Eve design, created three years earlier, is a free-form decanter handmade by a team of over 20 people. Its unique design, like a cobra sitting up from its basket, allows the wine to aerate eight times faster than a regular decanter, Ruiz said.
He added that this type of decanter is best for younger wines. An older wine, which has had time to mature, would do better in a different decanter.
The decanted wine, when tasted, differed greatly from a glass of the same wine that had only been allowed to sit out and aerate that way. There was a much greater balance between the spiciness and the tannins. The scent, as it had been with every wine in its proper glass, was perfectly balanced.
With the Cabernet still in hand, Ruiz had one final lesson for the tasters gathered.
“One of the last things we’re going to do tonight is the correct form of toasting, which a lot of people don’t really know,” he said.
Moving toward the front row, Ruiz began the instruction.
“Tilt the glass, look each other in the eyes and …” He then touched the two glasses together, releasing a resonant bong, which died off much the way a grandfather clock’s chimes fade.
“It’s a beautiful sound, and that’s the correct and appropriate way of toasting,” Ruiz said, leaving the audience to toast each other, palates flooded with great tasting wine and lost in the harmony of good crystal toasts.
Contact Sam Slaughter at [email protected].