Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/138003
"During the Prestige tour, we're establishing a benchmark for how to present and serve sparkling wine," said Tasting Room Assistant Manager Chloe Tyer, who works with a purchasing coordinator to procure stemware. The tasting room can see 1,400 visitors a day during the peak months of April through October. "Anecdotally, we do feel that upscale glassware improves sales and we'll be evaluating sales data from our Prestige tasting." THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB Chandon uses Riedel flutes to showcase its top-of-the-line étoile sparkling wines. FINEST QUALITY | BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE • Lead Free Crystal • Exclusive Stemware • Sheer Rim Vintage Premier 19.5oz Vintage Premier Vintage Premier 15.5oz • Innovators in Glass Decorating 12.75oz O ur family owned business has been supplying custom decorated glasses since 1983. Whether you are looking for glassware for your tasting room, festival, or special events we can recommend the right glass to fit your needs. 90 V I N E YARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT | July - Aug 2013 23780 NW Huffman Rd. Ste. 101 Hillsboro, OR 97124 888.284.7934 www.glasstechweb.com dfoss@glasstechweb.com Increasingly, wineries are finetuning their choices of stemware based on the wine styles they produce and sell. For Gilian Handelman, director of wine education at Kendall-Jackson in Sonoma County, upscale glassware is "definitely worth the extra money." After conducting focus group tastings that demonstrated how much better the Kendall-Jackson wines showed in thin-walled stems without a rolled lip, the winery selected the Riedel Ouverture red wine glass ($4.40 per stem) for use in the tasting room. For the company's Stonestreet mountain-grown cabernet sauvignons, it traded up to the 25-ounce Restaurant XL Cabernet stem ($6.95), which is used for special events, collectors, wine club members and for seminars on the road. Stonestreet also uses decanters designed by Georg Riedel to better aerate the mountain tannins and has used the Vinum series Bordeaux and Burgundy glasses at $14 each. "Glasses are such an intimate tool," Handelman said. "The amount of pleasure you derive (from the wine) is absolutely related to the tool. Spend a few more dollars on a glass and you'll get exponentially more pleasure from the experience." Chalk it up to a defining moment for Napa Valley winemaker Dave Miner, whose stemware epiphany came at the expense of his modesty more than nine years ago. While participating on a panel that was w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m