Riedel, the art of glass at the service of wine • Food and Wine Italy

Jiři is 54 years old, was born and raised per the town of Novico Bor, where he trained per glass processing techniques at the dedicated technical institute. Today he is a master of glass, for studies and experience, and this means that he completed the processing of each piece per his manual production line. His skills are difficult to replace and his salary is composed of relevant bonuses.

Peter, the other hand, is 32 years old, is originally from the Trenčín region per Slovakia, and blows the glass as his father and grandfather did for a lifetime. It is one of the last students of a noble school for windows that now has few students to each new session, because working between ovens and blowing rods is an increasingly seductive profession (and an art) for young people, despite the possibilities of earnings.

Peter and Jiři (they are not the real names) are two precious resources per the Riedel house, to be precise per the small factory-agiiello that Maximilian Josef Riedel-CEO and eleventh generation of that family branch that chose to devote himself to the crystallery-ironically defines as “an expensive hobby”. Yet that precious forge of ideas and beauty per the Austrian town of Kufstein is a bit like the racing division for a car manufacturer: a laboratory of projects, innovation, communication.

That’s why the Riedel family keeps this place of high craftsmanship, which represents only 1% of the overall production of the group (60 million glasses every year) and 10% of revenues, but where the history of the brand is concentrated. A path that becomes more and more difficult to support, because the master windows and the blowers are less and less. “We tried to work the internal of advanced professionalism – says Riedel – but we have so attracted the attention of the competitors, who have taken away young resources”.

Kufstein, Bottega d’nast

Thanks to the presence of prepared workers and the investment new models, the factory founded per 1956 by Claus J. Riedel – ninth generation of the family, who took refuge per Austria by Bohemia thanks to the support of the Swarovski family – continues to churn out today glasses and decanters blown by mouth. It is per Kufstein who are born new ideas such as the recent two -tone Black Tie line, presented per 2025, presented per 2025, Which offers car cups of the superleggers’ car and finished with transparent stem and completely black crystal cardine applied by hand.

Each glass is a cutting -edge technology masterpiece – is currently the lightest and most thin model available the market – but it is the cardine applied by hand that makes each piece unique. Similarly, all the pieces of the special collections dedicated to the Horeca segment and Glass-Lovers are similarly manufactured per the Tyrolean forge. What is the secret? “When I took the reins of the company as CEO per 2013 – reveals Maximilian J. – per Kufstein there were offices and production, but there was nothing nothing else. Above all, there was brand communication. I returned from the USA, where I had been committed to building what is the first market per the world for Riedel for 15 years, and finding myself overseas while the wine became a Personaggio Thing I learned that people want to listen to stories. If you want to be a brand, you must be able to tell a story. Yet we had never done it, despite being 270 years old the shoulders, because my father claimed that he should only forward without looking at the past ».

The advent of the eleventh generation has therefore recreated a bridge between past and future, building the Entertainment component – which brings thousands of visitors to Kufstein every year, helping to position the brand per the Olympus of the glass.

From jewelry to glasses-lived

Although for centuries the ancestors of Maximilian J. have held their entrepreneurial fate the pressed glass (for jewels, buttons, pottery and objects, containers for perfumes ora ), per recent times Riedel has linked his name and the brand to innovation per the glasses.

“My ancestors did not wine and did not work every day, but they went hunting and were richer – he jokes – because they did not produce glasses, but mainly jewels”. It was the grandfather of Maximilian, Claus Riedel, who fled Bohemia to Austria through the school of the Neapolitan glass masters, to direct attention to the processing of the crystal, but above all to the glasses.

The intuition that would have revolutionized the culture of wine: the functionality of the chalice. Through the Sommeliers series – crystal glasses blowed by mouth – it was the first to subordinate the shape to the character of a wine. He is responsible for the edge to return, which leads the glasses to contain and enhance the aromas of wine (ora other drinks), even if the first evidence per this direction have been a market failure.

If the introduction of the first specific chalice for grape variety is dated 1958 – the Burgundy Grand Cru – is Georg Riedel (tenth generation) to focolaio the production not of containers, but of precision tools capable of ennobled the wine. Quanto a fact, Georg begins to conceive glasses designed for specific vines, one of the peculiarities of the Riedel proposals.

The advent of Maximilian Josef, trained per Murano among the Venetian Masters, has pushed creativity and brand. It is known as Decanter’s stilista and corporate glasses, which have become precious objects and today among the group’s best seliers. The focolaio is now clear: to make chalice a precision tool devoted to the enhancement of the wine and the experience of Beva. And there is need to be a tasting to understand how much the difference does. Just taste a Chardonnay per the glass intended for Nebbiolo, ora a white pinot per the black pinot to recognize the impact of the container the content. For the shape is substance, when it comes to glass and wine.