The Captivating History and Diverse Types of Wine Glasses

The consumption of wine is a tradition that goes back centuries, but the custom of drinking the fermented juice of the vine from glass containers is younger than one might think. From filigree Riesling to massive Bordeaux, there have never been so many products to put wine in the right light. Falstaff takes a look at the fascinating history of the wine glass. The shape of a wine glass plays an important role in bringing out the wine’s nuanced aromas and flavors. Dedicated wine glasses curve inward at the top, which helps concentrate aromas.

But before diving into the shapes, sizes and types of wine glasses, let's take a look at the history of glass making.

The Origins of Glassmaking

While glass occurs naturally (think volcanic obsidian), glass making dates back to the ancient civilizations of Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Glass wine vessels first appeared in Egypt sometime around 1500 BC, but it wasn’t until the Romans discovered the technique of glass blowing that glass became both functional and highly sought after.

Cicero mentioned the Vitrum as early as 54 AD, and the transparent glass Crystallum, similar to rock crystal, was also in great demand. By the end of the first century, glass production was widespread throughout the Roman provinces, especially in Gaul and Britain and later in the Rhineland, where glassworks are documented in Cologne, Worms and Trier. The Romans almost always mixed their wine with water - drinking undiluted wine was considered barbaric.

However, some examples of Roman glasses were highly intricate, like the Lycurgus Cup, which is unusual because it looks jade green when lit from the front, but red when lit from behind. How did the Romans pull this off? Science.

Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine

After the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a decline in glass production in Europe, and drinking vessels were often made of silver, and often highly intricate. Drinking wine out of a silver cup makes the wine taste like aluminum foil, so it wasn’t long before glass drinking cups were back in style and demand.

Beginning in the 10th century, there was a resurgence in European glass, beginning with the stained-glass window, which featured heavily in Romanesque and Gothic architecture. With this resurgence, glassmaking hubs were established on the island of Murano in Venice, and in Bohemia, in the modern day Czech Republic.

Venice became the center of European glassware production from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, reaching the peak of its popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries. Glass production in Venice was so lucrative, the government passed a somewhat sketchy law in 1291, requiring all furnaces used for glassmaking be moved from Venice to the island of Murano. The stated intent was to remove the threat of a potentially disastrous fire from spreading throughout Venice.

Most historians believe, however, that the real motivation behind the law was to effectually confine the glass craftsmen to the island so they couldn’t disclose trade secrets. Murano glass makers perfected a glassmaking technique called cristallo, which produced completely clear, colorless glass.

In 1675, as Englishman George Ravenscroft searched for a way to recreate Venetian cristallo, he discovered (historians disagree whether it was an accident, or a technique he learned in Venice) how to make lead crystal. What he did was to use flint as the source of silica and then added lead oxide to soften the glass and prevent crizzling (thousands of tiny surface cracks). Ravenscroft’s patent expired in 1681, and within 15 years, over 30% of the factories in England were making leaded crystal.

Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas

The Baroque period brought a change in table culture. After silver and porcelain, courtly and aristocratic circles now attached great importance to appropriately refined glassware.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the picture changed again. Now it was bourgeois society that decorated its tables with fine glasses. As a result, glass production and refinement experienced an enormous boom in Bohemia. An ever growing number of middle class households, meant a demand for a series of equally decorated glasses each for Champagne, Rhine wine, red wine, southern wine (for Tokay, port and other dessert wines) and water.

From the middle of the 19th century, mass production set in, elaborate processing techniques became too expensive and only a few manufacturers focused on top-quality craftsmanship. One such gentleman was Ludwig Lobmeyr of Vienna. He had the star designers of his time create completely new shapes for wine ware, and many of these creations are still true design icons today. Lobmeyr was a visionary of the modern wine glass - as is clear from his No. 4 series from 1856.

The Art Nouveau movement beginning around 1890 marked a golden period for quality glass but this was brutally interrupted by the First World War. There followed the Great Depression, the Second World War and a period of reconstruction and stagnation.

At the first major post-war world exhibition in Brussels in 1958, Claus Riedel, a ninth-generation glassmaker who had taken over an insolvent glassworks in Kufstein in the Tyrol only a year before, showed a glass called 'Burgundy Grand Cru', which he claimed would promote the flavours and aromas of varieties such as Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo. This was initially met with smiles, but the Museum of Modern Art in New York included the model in its permanent collection. A year later, this glass was voted "Most Beautiful Glass in the World".

Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery

At the beginning of the seventies, specifically in 1973, the first set of grape variety-specific wine glasses was presented with the 'Sommelier' series. And for everyone who tasted from these beautiful, fine, handmade glasses, the smirk quickly turned into true enthusiasm. Never before had wine lovers had such an instrument in their hands.

In 1986 came the next Riedel world success with the 'Vinum' series. It was the first wine series adapted to the grape varieties to be produced by machine, developed through intensive tasting research. To this day, Vinum remains a benchmark for the Riedel brand.

The idea that a wine glass must not only be visually but also functionally coherent has long been accepted in recent decades, and not only among wine experts. And so, building on this idea, a veritable cult has developed around the perfect wine glass.

Connoisseurs agree that handmade wine glasses are the spearhead, but it is fair to say that today there are machine-made products that are barely inferior to mouth-blown glasses. The share of handmade glass in respect of total production is vanishingly small but of course varies among the different glassmakers.

The Riedel Group, for example, produces just over 50 million glasses a year, of which, according to Maximilian J. Riedel, about 500,000 are hand-blown, or one percent. Zalto relies 100 percent on handcrafted glass; machine-blown glasses are not part of their product range.

While new brands are popping up all the time, the capacity to produce handmade goods is hardly increasing. The two leading manufacturers in German-speaking countries - Riedel and Zwiesel - produce their own goods in company-owned factories.

Handmade glasses such as the 'Sommelier' series from Riedel are produced in their main factory in Kufstein, those from Zwiesel in a factory founded in 2001 in Halimba in Hungary.

Apart from a few small specialist companies, virtually all well-known brands cooperate with major manufacturing companies headquartered in the countries of the former Danube monarchy and thus all have their roots in the impressive glass industry of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Of these, the most important factory is Rona, a company in Lednické Rovne, which was founded in 1892 by the glass manufacturer J. Schreiber & Neffen from Vienna and had branches in Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and London.

Another indispensable manufacturer is Steklarna Rogaška, based in Rogaška Slatina, Slovenia.

Wine glasses have changed a great deal over time - in size, shape, color and style. In the 1700s, the average wine glass held about 2.2 ounces of wine. Today, the average wine glass holds about 15.2 ounces.

During the Georgian period (1714-1830), the fashion was for fancy people to drink wine from a glass that was brought to them (glasses weren’t on the table) by a footman. They took a sip (which was about all the glass held), and then the glass was taken back to the sidebar and refilled. Repeat.

Another popular type of Georgian drinking glass was the firing glass. It had a short stem and a thick foot. Beginning in 1745, Britain imposed a tax on glass based on weight. The result was that glassmakers began to produce lightweight “excise” glasses, featuring hollowed out stems decorated with intricate engraving.

Jacobite glasses were a particularly beautiful, and not especially subtle, foray into politics. Wine glasses were decorated with the Stuart rose and buds, symbols of the Jacobites, who supported the restoration of James II’s Scottish descendants, James III and Charles (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie) to the English throne. Showing support for the House of Stuart was a not only dangerous, but a treasonous offense.

The Victorian Era (1837-1901) in England was a time of exciting discoveries, inventions and exploration, following the Industrial Revolution. At home (if you were wealthy), the size and number of wine glasses at a meal began to increase. Dining was now a series of successive courses of plated foods, which were brought to, and placed in front of diners (footmen still had job security).

Glasses stayed on the table, so they needed to be bigger so they didn’t have to be refilled after every sip. The Arts & Crafts movement began in the middle of the 19th century, as a reaction against industrialization of the Victorian Era.

The tear glass by Arts & Crafts designer, Henry Powell, is said to have been inspired by the glass vase in the foreground of the central panel of Dutch painter Hugo van der Goes work, The Portinari Triptych (1476-79). The Art Nouveau movement (1880-1910) was all about natural forms, curved lines, a sense of fluidity, and asymmetry. Think Tiffamy lamps.

Carnival Glass, named because it was literally given away at carnivals, is sometimes called the “poor man’s Tiffany,” because it resembled Tiffany Favrile glass, but was decidedly affordable. Art Deco movement of the 1920s was characterized by abstract patterns, geometric motifs and the use of man made materials.

French designer, Renee Lalique (he was born in the Champagne region of France, btw), got his start in the Art Nouveau movement as a jewelry designer. He gradually shifted to glass, and the mass production of innovative, usable art glass.

Depression Glass in the United States was the result of a major pivot in glass companies during the Great Depression. The average family income dropped by roughly 40%, which left very little money for anything besides necessities. Glass companies couldn’t afford to continue making labor intensive cut glass crystal, so they switched to making significantly cheaper, molded glassware.

Uranium, or Vaseline glass, is a particular type of glass that dates to the 1880s. It gets its neon green color from radioactive uranium, which causes it to glow under a black light. Is uranium glass dangerous? No more so than your lead crystal. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did a study in 2001, and found that the amount of radiation exposure caused by uranium/Vaseline glass is only about 1% of the radiation that an average person is exposed to each year. At the end of the day, it’s probably not going to kill you.

The 1950s saw the rise of Scandinavian Modern as the most influential design movement of the 20th century. 1950s stemware was widely influenced by Scandinavian design, with the idea that beautiful and functional everyday objects should be affordable for everyone, not just the wealthy. Design emphasized simplicity, minimalism, and functionality. It dominated the international scene in the 1950s, and continues to shape the way we live today.

And then came the Paris Goblet, which was de rigueur for fashionable drinking in the 1980s. It was heavy, and had thick walls - it’s basically a fish bowl on a stem. Then there were the heavily cut patterned glasses of the 1990s.

The Science Behind the Shape

The size of the glass’ opening affects how much oxygen is in contact with the wine. Ethanol vapors are also released, and the bowl of the glass helps to collect those aromas in a ring-shaped pattern around the rim. Japanese scientists confirmed this pattern by tracking the concentration of gaseous ethanol as it is released from wine. The shape of the glass also impacts how quickly the wine flows and where it lands on your palate when drinking.

Wine is all about aroma and taste, and the shape of a wine glass can and does enhance a wine’s aroma, which in turn impacts how a wine tastes. By early 2000, there were dozens of companies selling complete lines of stemware for every imaginable grape variety and style of wine.

Types of Wine Glasses

Red wine glasses will usually have a larger bowl than white wine glasses. This allows the bolder, fuller flavors of red wines to “breathe” and display both aromatic and flavor qualities. The rims of red wine glasses are wider for the same reason. Some red wine glasses have tulip-shaped rims to bring more air into the glass.

The Cabernet glass is perfect for full-bodied, complex red wines that are high in tannin. The generous size of this glass allows the bouquet to develop fully, and smooths out the rough edges. It emphasises the fruit, playing down the bitter qualities of the tannin, and allows wines to achieve balance.

The New World Pinot Noir is perfect to support the balance of fragility and fresh compact fruit in light-bodied wines from the New World. Created during several workshops with producers from Oregon, US, the tulip shape and slightly flared lip highlights the irresistible sweetness, while perfectly balancing the acidity and de-emphasizing the alcohol, to create a perfect picture of the wine. This glass is also well suited for showing the aromatics of Rosé Champagne.

Contemporary, light and elegant design; the Eisch Sensis Plus Sky Collection is designed to take the guess work out of which glass. The proprietary SensisPlus manufacturing process is an added step the glass goes through after manufacturing.

This is achieved in the glass without touching, agitating or swirling. This not only works with wine, but in the SensisPlus barware with all types of spirits, as well. It even works with coffee and tea! No odd shaped glasses with far reaching claims needed.

All Spiegelau glasses are made of lead-free crystal for superior glassware that does your wine justice. The highest quality crystal ingredients make Spiegelau products more durable, dishwasher safe, break-resistant, and more brilliant than standard wine glasses. Each glass in the collection is designed for a specific vintage and has the finest, thinnest walls so that each sip appears to materialize out of thin air.

Today, you can get your hands on any size, shape, color and style wine glass your heart desires.

Table: Types of Wine Glasses and Their Uses

Each type of wine glass is designed to enhance the specific characteristics of the wine it holds, making the tasting experience more enjoyable and nuanced. Whether you're a casual wine drinker or a seasoned connoisseur, choosing the right glass can make a significant difference in how you perceive the wine's aroma, flavor, and overall balance.

The evolution of wine glasses reflects not only advancements in glassmaking technology but also shifts in cultural practices and aesthetic preferences. From the simple clay cups of ancient times to the intricately designed crystal stemware of today, the history of wine glasses is a testament to human ingenuity and the enduring appreciation for the art of winemaking.