It has been some years since the “champagne flute” was banned from our drinking circles.

Now is the time to have a ceremonial glass crashing; just like our Greek friends who enjoy breaking plaster of Paris plates at weddings.

Out with flutes and in with coupes or bit of glass that does have a constricted aperture. Even young Maximilian Riedel, the specialist Austrian wine glass maker who has made a glass shape for most wine styles in the world, agrees. 

Riedel Veritas Range
champagne centre

Visit the Champagne region. You will never be served a glass of bubbles from a flute.

It is probably an American invention where one never needed to smell the wine, just marvel from eye level at the stream of bubbles and forget about the sensory explosion!

Like myself, Max Riedel reports that while spending time in the region of great bubbles-Champagne, he notices the locals using wine glasses in their champagne workshops, yet they never destroyed the tradition that was procreated around the world to serve in flutes.

Now Max Riedel has spoken through his glassware. He “has ditched the flute in favour of fatter (egg shaped) glassware” in the newest Veritas and future glass ranges.

I suggest we follow suit en masse with today’s glassware trends.

Sniffing a flute of carbon dioxide is not my idea of bubble pleasure. And worse still, the gush of bubbly CO2 is an asphyxiant so there is no inherent initial pleasure from “flute wine”.

And now here is a great example of forward thinking: Dom Perignon Rose is increasingly dispensed in the Riedel New World Pinot Noir which also doubles as the Nebbiolo glass; as the Moet people would like to claim as theirs.

Don’t forget to have a glass crashing time.