Suresh Kanji was dining in a newish, quite decent restaurant in Hong Kong, and ordered a bottle of quite decent red wine to go with dinner. When the glassware arrived, he changed his mind. He downgraded to the most ordinary bottle of wine on the list. Why? Kanji is the general manager of Townhouse, representative of Riedel glassware in Hong Kong, and is one who conducts the by-now legendary glass tastings, that include a 'joker' glass.
This is a crude, heavy, ugly wine glass which serves to precisely make the point about how the shape of a wine glass affects - negatively - the experience of wine drinking. The glassware in the aforementioned 'decent' restaurant was the brand he had chosen as his 'joker'.
Into the tall, elegant, unadorned Riedel glass made especially for sauvignon blanc, we pour a mid-range, quite commercial sauvignon blanc from New Zealand.
The nose is quite subtle, with elderflower and gooseberry aromas, but nothing too unnecessarily grassy. On the palate, the acidity is balanced with a touch of residual sugar and some gentle, pretty flavours. There's a hint of alcohol at the back but a nice finish overall.
We sniff the wine in the 'joker' glass. Nothing at all. Perhaps, if we use our imagination, there might be something vaguely floral there - or maybe not. We sip. Whoah! All we get is harsh, out-of-balance acidity; overall a quite unpleasant sipping experience. Riedel traces its roots back to 1756, but it was in 1958 that Professor Claus Riedel discovered the simple truth - that content commands the shape.
He was convinced that virtually every glass that people were drinking from was doing insufficient justice to the wine. His son, Georg, the present president, is 10th generation, and was named Man of the Year in 1996 by Decanter magazine in Britain, for services to the wine industry.
