Today, it is taken for granted that we drink wine from smooth, transparent glass glasses, with a few exceptions. The glasses we know today are the product of a millennium of continuous development, dating back to the tenth century when wine was consumed from simple wooden vessels or metal cups, often with elaborate decorations. Before the tenth century, glass glasses were also popular in ancient Rome; they were simple, wide, often without a stem, and intended for drinking wine mixed with water.
The dominance of Venice and Bohemia
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the glassmaking industry all but disappeared, only to return in the tenth century due to a high demand for stained glass for sacral use. Drinking glasses, along with other glassware, became highly sought-after luxury items, with the center of their production located on the island of Murano near Venice. The dominance of Murano glass was so strong that in 1291, the Venetian authorities enacted a law requiring all glass furnaces to be moved from the city of Venice to the island of Murano, and craftsmen were forbidden under the threat of death to leave the island. The secret of Venetian glassmakers was called cristallo, a process for making completely colorless glass using quartz pebbles.
In the seventeenth century, Bohemia also established itself as a dominant glassmaking center, with a long history of glassmaking that dated back to the thirteenth century. Bohemian glassmakers developed a method for producing colorless glass of high strength that could be shaped by cutting. In the nineteenth century, Czech glassmakers exported glass worldwide, and due to affordable prices, it adorned the homes of the middle class, with a large portion of the offering consisting of elegant, colorless wine glasses.
Did the church influence the shape of wine glasses?
A very important step in the development of wine glasses occurred in 1675 when the Englishman George Ravenscroft successfully rediscovered the Venetian method for making crystal, that is, lead glass. It is unknown whether this happened by chance, but his discovery laid the foundation for the development of modern wine glasses and made Great Britain one of the leading glassmaking powers.
It is unclear exactly when glasses with a separate bowl, stem and base – modern wine glasses – were introduced, as there was a long evolution from glasses that resembled today’s glasses for spirits. One intriguing theory suggests that the church influenced this design: according to this, glasses were modeled after the chalices used in communion. Regardless, today’s selection of wine glasses is extremely broad, but they almost universally share the same basic shape and elongated stem, allowing us not to touch the bowl of the glass, thus preventing it from getting stained and unnecessarily warming the wine. Many shapes have been developed, dedicated to wine styles and even specific varieties.
Handblown works of art
The proper shape of a glass greatly enhances the enjoyment of wine, and this applies to both machine-made glasses and luxurious handblown glasses. Some of these glasses are true works of art, as in the case of those made by Kurt Josef Zalto for the historical house Josephinenhütte. In some glasses, the emphasis is placed on tasting precision, and the form gracefully follows the function, as seen in the glasses from the house of Sydonios, which are the result of extensive research, light as a feather, elegant, and ready for the most demanding tastings.