![]() Getting insights from wine experts, though, can ease the process––especially now that the wine scene is moving toward a more pared-down approach to glassware. To my eyes, the Jancis seemed the most classically beautiful.With so many styles available at a wide range of price points, shopping for wine glasses can be overwhelming. The Gabriel-Glas was wider at the base of the bowl than the Zalto and more abruptly angled inward it was also the lightest of the glasses, almost feathery in the hand. The Jancis has a slightly shorter stem, and the base of the bowl was more gently rounded and narrow. Of the five I tried, the Gabriel-Glas and the Jancis were very much in the Zalto mold. Zalto stood alone, contending with various less-expensive knockoffs until the other glass companies moved in with their own high-end universal glasses. ![]() And, although Zalto made three other glasses specifically for reds, whites and sparklers, the Universal, with its suggestion that it was appropriate for all wines, appealed to my own longstanding belief that the ease of having one all-purpose glass far outweighed whatever microscopic benefits might accrue from choosing specialized glasses. The Zalto by contrast was modestly sized. What’s more, the glasses in the high-end Riedel Sommeliers series seemed absurdly colossal, like something a wine snob in a parody of pretension might select to impress. Some restaurants, if your bottle was expensive enough or your name recognizable, would whisk away the generic glasses on the table and replace them with Zaltos. I saw Zaltos in wine-loving restaurants as august as Le Bernardin in New York and as modest as Cave Ox, a wine bar in the Sicilian town of Solicchiata near Mount Etna. In the years that followed, the Zalto Universal became a standard among many wine aficionados. I bought a set of six almost immediately after the tasting, not cheap at more than $50 apiece but worth it for supplementing the conventional, serviceable Riedel Vinum Cabernet glasses that I had long been using daily at home for every sort of wine. Most important, the aromas and flavors of the wine presented themselves with clarity and intensity. As I swirled wine in the glass, the stem seemed to bend back and forth, delicate yet flexible and strong. It seemed impossibly thin and light, a sensual pleasure to hold. The Zalto was tall like a Bordeaux glass but rather than gently curving and arcing upward, it angled up abruptly and inward in rather a straight line. “I was pushed out and they kept the ‘Zalto’ name.” “In order to grow faster, I made the compromise of accepting foreign investors into my company,” he told Forbes magazine in December 2020. It was designed by Kurt Josef Zalto - that Zalto - who left his eponymous company some time ago. The five glasses I’ve been testing since November include the Zalto Universal and four competitors: the Gabriel-Glas Gold Edition the Wine Glass, from the partnership of Jancis Robinson, the renowned British wine writer, and the designer Richard Brendon the Sensory Glass, designed by Roberto Conterno of the great Barolo producer Giacomo Conterno, in conjunction with Zwiesel Kristallglas, a German manufacturer and the Josephine Universal from Josephinenhütte, which has perhaps the most interesting back story. ![]() Their manufacturers consider them all dishwasher safe, a prerequisite for someone like me, whose commitment to wine does not extend to the handwashing and cloth drying of glassware. I didn’t baby them or hesitate to put them in the dishwasher. In fact, I found each to be as durable as they were delicate. ![]() So it was that my dining area became the arena for a wine glass smackdown, a term that I use advisedly given the lightness and seeming fragility of these five glasses. I am certainly not a purist who will drink only from the best. Choosing wine glasses is a little like selecting a car: Even the least-expensive vehicle will get you where you want to go, but the trip is a different experience in the finest Mercedes-Benz.
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