Extreme White-Wine Sipping

Here it came--a shot of a ’97 Austrian Riesling, like a wave of peach and apricot aromas with a dry bitter-almond finish. And here it came again, but from a different glass, and this time the wine was flat and bland, with scarcely any bouquet.

In fact, both glasses were different--really different. Obviously, this was Georg Riedel doing his wine glass show at Campanile recently, but these two glasses, part of the new Riedel Extreme line made by his company, had wild, unfamiliar shapes. Instead of belling out smoothly, the side of the first glass had a nearly triangular profile. There was a low-slung angular look to the second, which was designed to show off the big oaky, buttery flavors of Chardonnay.

It’s always amazing to experience the difference a well-designed wine glass makes. “It is not my discovery,” Riedel insisted. “It was my father’s, in the ‘50s. I am continuing the tradition.”

So, is the new Extreme line better than the other glasses made by the 244-year-old Riedel firm?

“No,” said Riedel. “For flavor, the best is still the hand-blown Sommeliers line. Frankly, we’ve introduced these new shapes because of this.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a glass made by a competitor. It was an obvious knockoff of the Riedel Cabernet Sauvignon glass (though the line wasn’t as pure and it didn’t ring as true when struck), selling for a fraction of the price.

Riedel held up one of his Extreme glasses, studying its jazzy, stylish shape, and said wryly, “I thought, ‘I’m going to make that [design] a little different, and I’m going to make them [the competition] a little suffering.’ ”