The Best Wine Glasses for Every Kind of Wine

This is the single most competitive category in all of glassware, and let me tell you—I had not fully comprehended the subtlety of life’s rich pageant until faced with testing a dozen different universal stems. Some are a little larger, some are a little lighter, but they’re all singular in their purpose, which is to offer wine drinkers the option of using just one glass stem across the entire beverage pantheon.

GlasVin is an enormously impressive company making deep inroads across wine culture; it makes a savvy wedding registry choice, offers a wide range of custom and engraving options, and makes a broad spectrum of products. Its Universal glass has that Goldilocks thing down: It’s not too thin, not too heavy, not too tall, and not too expensive. There’s a reason why many of the finest restaurants in America—including Kato, Alinea, and Cote—choose to partner with GlasVin, and I think its Universal makes a strong case for itself in any home. Consider your GlasVin Universal as an entry point to the world of GlasVin, which includes limited editions like the Fu (currently sold out), an epic wide-bodied glass designed by wine maven Charlie Fu; and the Obsession, which is designed to provide “maximal aromatic release.”

Hear me out: Budget and “entry level” are relative terms, and there are perhaps some readers who are doing the math right now—$33 per glass!—and blanching at whether or not this could be considered “budget” at all. Yes, you can get something cheaper at Ikea, but it will not remotely be equivalent to the Gabriel-Glas, which sits in a sweet spot of quality, affordability, and delight. They are gorgeous glasses, with broad bowls that allow for ample swirling and aeration, made from a single piece of molten crystal with no fuse points or glues. The rim is laser cut, which helps reduce the likelihood of chipping or damage. It’s slightly weighty—a full 150 grams—and safely goes straight into your dishwasher for cleaning. It manages to feel both thin and stout in your hand, the combined result of which registers to my mind as a kind of durable luxury.

Gabriel-Glas is extremely focused: It makes this StandArt as its workhorse glass, and also offers a considerably more expensive hand-blown version called the Gold Edition, which is lovely (as you might expect). But if you’re a novice initiate to the world of nice stemware, the StandArt makes an exceedingly useful and accessible starting place. I have been given these glasses as a gift, given them myself as a gift to others, and recommend them without caveat.

This is a bit of a misnomer. It’s hard to choose a single “best red wine glass” because there are so, so many different styles and expressions of red wine around the world, and a glass that works well for, say, a brooding traditional Barolo might not be what you want to serve with a bombastic California zinfandel. We could do an entire sub-guide on red wine glasses, but if pressured under duress to pick just one, I’m going to go with a glass that flatters my personal favorite red wine style—all roads lead to Burgundy, and the Zalto Burgundy Glass.

Zalto is a household name in the wine stem world, and so popular among wine drinkers that it’s been subject over the years to product shortages and competitive distribution paths. Some of that is hype, but when it comes to Zalto’s signature Burgundy bowl, I think the product backs it up. The Zalto Burgundy radiates elegance: It’s hand-blown, dishwasher safe, and bleeding massive, offering a full 32 ounces of volume—enough to pour out a full bottle of wine if one so desired. This size gives drinkers the ability to effortlessly swirl and sniff away at French pinot noir from the Burgundy region, but it’s also quite at home when used for aromatic white wines, such as chardonnay or Grüner Veltliner.

There’s just something about these glasses—the brand is made in Austria but has roots in the glassmaking traditions of the Veneto, in northern Italy, so perhaps it’s a matter of sprezzatura. If you’re at a restaurant using these glasses, it’s quite like you’re in good hands, and at home it elevates one’s wine drinking situation to new heights. There are many outstanding red wine glasses on the market, but there is only one Zalto Burgundy Glass.

I was completely unfamiliar with the Mark Thomas line of glassware before researching this feature, and found myself immediately attracted to the entire product line for its unique “double bend” beveled shaping and sleek, smooth aesthetic. Founded in Austria in 2014, Mark Thomas focuses exclusively on hand-blown lead-free crystal glassware, and its products can be found at a unique collection of bars, restaurants, and leading wine shops, including Red & White Wines (Chicago), Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels (NYC), and Claridge’s (London).

White wine glasses are another enormously popular and competitive category, and a lot of establishments will actually carry glassware specially purposed for serving white wines in. But this one, wow—it is feather light at just 76 grams, and yet still dishwasher safe. Everything tastes beautiful in the Mark Thomas (try it with mineral water or apricot juice), but there may be no finer glass in the world of enjoying crisp, clean white wines like riesling, sauvignon blanc, and even vintage Champagne. The brand’s signature “double bend” offers a neat trick—one can fill to the rim of the first bend for a sample pour or wine tasting, or to the top of the second bend for a proper glass pour. They’re visually appealing and offer an alluring, totally modern profile. This was a total discovery to me, and I’m now fully on Team Mark Thomas for its entire product line—but if you have to pick just one, start here.

Stemless glassware is divisive. Some serious wine drinkers might roll their eyes at it—hands go on the stem, not on the bowl!— while others will have happy memories attached to this sort of glass, or prize them for their unfussy usability. I was enormously impressed by everything I tried from Richard Brendon, a UK-based glassware company that works in collaboration with Jancis Robinson, OBE, MW, one of the most respected and influential wine writers in the world. (The World Atlas Of Wine remains perhaps the single most impactful book on wine I’ve ever read and is intensely recommended).

These little handheld numbers are intuitively shaped and effortlessly comfortable to use, and nothing has been compromised: They’re made of mouth-blown sparklingly light crystal, delicate and fine yet utterly approachable (and dishwasher safe). These make a fine choice if you’re doubling up on high-quality glassware for serving water and wine together in tandem (as God intended), but there is nothing on earth stopping you from enjoying a lovely glass of rosé in this glass, perhaps outside in the garden with a little sun.

It makes sense when you think about it. Many wine glass companies also get in on the decanter game, extending their aesthetic and product vision from the realm of glassware into the larger-format carafe setting. For home consumers this offers the ability to create a unified aesthetic effect—the wine glasses match the decanter, how cool!—but also to mix-and-match, because perhaps you like one brand’s decanter offering more than the glassware itself.

Honestly, decanters could be their own whole guide, but of the brands I tried for this story, two stood out. These devices do more than look cool: They also serve a purpose in wine service, and I’m recommending two that can be employed to achieve neatly opposite effects.

From the Richard Brendon x Jancis Robinson Collection, the “Mature Wine Decanter” is a thing of sturdy beauty. It comes on shaped more like an empty glass bottle than some ornate objet d’art, but its design subtlety portends a sophisticated use case. This is the perfect decanter to use when serving a vintage wine—for our purposes, let’s say wine 20 years old or older—for which you want to limit the exposure to oxygen across the serving window. This decanter comes with a handblown stopper, a neat piece of kit that shuts out oxygen and also looks pretty damn cool atop the piece. I liked the looks of this immediately, but then was blown away by its application over the course of a happy evening spent with a bottle of Cappellano Barolo dating back to the Clinton administration. If you are a vintage wine lover or you have one in your life, this decanter is a game changer.

The Josephine Collection No. 7 Decanter is a show-stopping conversation piece. Mouth-blown and very much in keeping with the unique design language of Kurt Josef Zalto, this decanter comes on first and foremost like a piece of conceptual glass art. It’s enormous, offering a sizable surface area and the Josephine brand’s signature “kink”—a kind of glassform wobble at the middle of the vessel—which allows for endless swirling. It also boasts an unusual “cone” shape at the bottom of the vessel, which promotes a spiral motion for the liquid inside when it’s poured and aerated.

The end result is a decanter that positively gulps in oxygen, which makes it perfect for decanting out younger wines, particularly those that might traditionally benefit from extended aging. If you’ve got a Grand Cru Echezeaux or a serious young Oregon Chardonnay on your hands and you simply cannot wait a moment longer to drink them, this decanter is your new best friend (and also—please call me). Form and function, style and substance—I cannot recommend this decanter enough, and it’s also available in an extra-large Magnum size, in case that’s in fact how you roll.

Let’s get one thing straight up front: Wine flutes are outro like Gwyneth Paltrow. Champagnes and sparkling wines should never be fluted under even the most dire of circumstances, as the shape of the flute compresses aromatics and flavors. I will make an exception for using your granny’s vintage crystal flutes on special occasions, but if you’re shopping for new glassware (and using this guide for such), flutes are not the way to go.

Josephine Collection is the work of Kurt Josef Zalto, a sixth-generation glassmaker who set out to forge his own path in the world of stemware. Every glass in his range is unique and memorable, but the brand’s Champagne glass is my personal favorite from this line. Called the No. 4, this glass uniquely hybridizes various wine glass styles—a cantilevered bowl with ample surface area, a tight “chimney” for focused aroma—and it looks positively stunning while doing it. Best of all, the glass features a unique diamond-pointed base at the bottom of the bowl, which helps channel bubbles upward and promotes extended effervescence. It’s a beautifully engineered glass, but also thin and sophisticated, a total luxury to use. Sniff and swirl and appreciate your sparkling wine with this glass, because hey, Champagne is only getting more expensive these days, so you might as well really enjoy it.

How deep down the rabbit hole must one be to appreciate the use of a travel wine glass set? Well—if you’ve ever found yourself, say, at an Airbnb stocked only with red Solo cups, or planning a winey picnic somewhere far off the beaten path, this kind of option might be right for you. I have surprised myself by finding repeated utility for the Voyage+ by Grassl Glass, which comes ready for adventure with four glassware slots, perfect for two stems of red and two stems of white. Allow me to share with you the perfect use case: a recent night out for my wife’s birthday, which included a bit of a staycation situation at a local hotel, the occasion for which I had procured a very cool bottle of Italian red wine from her birth year. Would the hotel’s provided acrylic glassware have been fine enough to drink from? Sure, of course. But did we immensely enjoy instead using a pair of Grassl 1855 bowls from our trusty Voyage+? You bet we did.

I’ve overall been enormously impressed by everything from Grassl, a Swiss wineglass manufacturer that to me offers just the right amount of consideration and geekiness while not overwhelming the wine drinking experience. Armed with this carrier, fully loaded with two 1855 red glasses and Mineralité wine glasses, there is no hangout for which you will be unprepared. The entirety of its Vigneron series is highly recommended.

Fontaine is a new company, very much an upstart, and its hand-blown titanium glass crystal feels lovely in your hands. This is the only wine glass it makes; its line is extremely small and focused, and includes only two other products, both intended for whiskey. At just 95 grams, the glass is beautifully light but never feels fragile or breakable. And if you do happen to damage your Fontaine, the brand offers a 1:1 replacement program at a reduced wholesale price. Everything tastes beautiful from this glass, to which I found myself returning again and again throughout the testing process, and have since incorporated into regular use in my own home.