Test driving a new line of stems

Robin, if you think this is an improper post feel free to yank it. I have no interest or affiliation with Zalto or with winemonger.com(other than as a satisfied customer of various wines), which is thinking of importing this line. Emily Weissman of Winemonger and I have never met, but have posted on the same fora for a while, and she kindly sent me a sample set of these glasses. All she asked was my honest opinion.

So over last couple weeks I have tried an assortment of glasses from Zalto, known as the Denk'Art line (after Father Denk, an Austrian wine expert). Info and pictures here:
http://www.zaltoglas.at/

Overall, I quite liked the glasses. They're very light, with thin rims, and yet are dishwashable. The shapes are a bit more extreme and angular than my Speigelaus, Schott Zweisel, or Riedels -most people found them striking, but a couple didn't like.

My preference of the glasses (in order):
Champagne- this is a really cool glass, a nice balance between flute and regular wine glass. Enough room for the nose to develop, but angular thin shape that shows off bubbles well. We compared side by side with flutes and white wine stems, the clear winner. Seems to combine the strengths of both. When I break enough Riedels to replace, these are the ones I'm definitely ordering (if available in US).
White Wine- nice shape, good aromatics, sits in hand well, good size.
Dessert - very nice, if maybe a tad large for my pours, but with a bigger dessert wine probably need that for nose to develop- did well with both Sauternes and PG SGN.
Bordeaux- I like the rather angular shape, good aromatics (like all of them this is dishwashable, but the Bdx and Burg glasses are too tall for my top rack)
Universal- most extreme of the shapes, a pretty good stem, but polarizing for looks.
Burgundy- this is the only one I don't think I'd consider buying (when I ever need stems again). I know some people love the huge bowls, but this seems ungainly. Last night I had my friend Yung try the line, his opinion (without any prompting from me) was the same " I like them all, but the Burg glass is a bit too much"

Thanks Emily for the opportunity to try these, its fun being a test pilot.

[Robin Garr]

Robin, if you think this is an improper post feel free to yank it

Dale, it's not improper at all! Sharing information as consumers about wines and wine-related products has always been a big part of what we do here.

Speaking of pink meat, by the way, I don't know Emily at all, but I got a very bad impression of Winem****r when they launched because they sent out a heavy wave of spam that I found offensive, and I haven't gotten over it yet. Maybe I ought to?

Funnily, while my inbox gets tons of wine spam, even though I'm a customer I don't get many emails from winemonger.

My impression of the company (Emily and her husband are principals I believe) is that they're very committed to their growers, and really think that Austrian wines are underrated. But it's not unusual for folks in a fairly new business to get...shall we say overenthusiastic? If you had problems I'd try contacting them directly.

Overall I've liked most of their wines (Stryian SBs, various Gruners for the most part, a few dessert wines). Quality is very good for the money. Only drawback is in NY they have chosen to be super-legal and go through a paper 3-tier system, which makes shipping a bit more expensive than some West Coast retailers.

I don't know if they actually are importing these glasses yet, they were just considering.

Speaking of pink meat, by the way, I don't know Emily at all, but I got a very bad impression of Winem****r when they launched because they sent out a heavy wave of spam that I found offensive, and I haven't gotten over it yet. Maybe I ought to?

That's very odd, Robin. I've got quite a bit of wine-related spam (Nat Decants, anyone?) but nary a thing from Winemonger except for the occasional personal email from Emily (whom I also know from online fora). I wonder how widespread that spam was? I'd have thought that they would have known better. FWIW, they carry a very nice lineup of Austrian wines and even brought over two younger producers (Johann Donnabaum and Franz-Josef Gristch) for a promotional tour of the US a couple years ago.

Mark Lipton
(Also not affiliated with Winemonger)

[Robin Garr]

That's very odd, Robin. I've got quite a bit of wine-related spam (Nat Decants, anyone?) but nary a thing from Winemonger

Mark (and Dale) ... in fairness, WineMonger does NOT spam me now. I remember when the site launched, I got enough PR-type E-mail from them, or from a publicity firm working on their behalf, that it frankly made me cranky. But I suppose it's been long enough now that I should get over it ... based on your testimony it sounds like an excellent organization.

And if Emily participates in wine forums, maybe you guys could invite her to come play in our playground?

Hello,
Emily from Winemonger here.

First a thank you to Dale and Mark for vouching for me.

Also a thank you to Robin for the invitation to join the discussion. Robin- that you were spammed by Winemonger is troubling. When we launched, we did exactly one press release. In the two years + since then, only one more. Our newsletters are only sent to those who have double confirmed, and then we only send out about one per month. We have never purchased an email list, nor have we employed an outside PR firm. This leads me to my concern that someone used our domain to send out spam to damage our reputation. There were many who did not...let's say appreciate our sales model of eliminating the middleman for the most part, and the road was made quite bumpy in the beginning. I can assure you that our position is to import what we believe to be excellent wines and to do our best to present them honestly while never coming across as hucksters. I hope that we have been successful.

All that said- if I had received a bunch of spam from a new company, I too would have become cranky. I am so glad that we have been given the opportunity to clear this up.

And now to the topic of this thread- the Zalto stemware. Response has been very favorable, so we have decided to take the plunge and import the full lineup. I will not let this turn into a commercial post, so this is not the place to discuss pricing. For any interested, please feel free to send me a direct email to my first name at winemonger.com.

Best wishes and cheers, and I look forward to chiming in on future discussions,
Emily

Emily, as a WLDG member from day one (I think) please allow me to welcome you to the forum. It is just not possible for us to have too many ITB'rs posting IMO. I will visit your website and if you sell wines in Kentucky, I will try them too. Welcome again.

[Robin Garr]

Also a thank you to Robin for the invitation to join the discussion. Robin- that you were spammed by Winemonger is troubling. When we launched, we did exactly one press release.

Hi, Emily, and a warm welcome to you.

First, let me assure you that after reading the testimony from our folks, any residual crankiness is now fully abolished. It's not anything that I really spent a lot of time dwelling on, either.

I wish I could remember more specifics, simply so I could explain my response to you in more detail. As I recall, though, it was a combination of tone and numbers. I suspect that what probably happened is that whoever handled your PR was careless in administering your mail list and probably sent me one copy of the release each to several different E-mail addresses that I use or have used at one time or another. They all come in together, so what the sender assumed was one release per customer actually looked to me like a small flood.

Anyway, again, you are absolutely correct that Winemonger does not bombard folks with unsolicited E-mail, and that's a good thing.

Glad you found your way to our forum, and hope you'll hang around.