RIEDEL

Start with what you drink most often. For full-bodied red wine, look for a large bowl that gives the wine room to breathe: in the series Vinum the Cabernet or Merlot glass holds nearly 100 cl, even though you pour no more than a 15 cl glass into it. White wine and Riesling are better suited to a narrower bowl of around 40 cl, which preserves their freshness. Pinot Noir, meanwhile, gets a wide, rounded shape that captures its delicate aromas.

Then choose the series. Veritas is thin-walled and machine-blown, light in the hand and intended for everyday use. Performance has a subtle optic in the bowl that increases the contact surface. Veloce is the slimmer, taller line. If you're not looking for wine glasses but barware, then Drink Specific Glassware is the series designed with a bartender, featuring rocks, neat, fizz, highball, and Nick and Nora glasses side by side. All are lead-free crystal glass.

Pour less than you might think. An 80 cl goblet is not meant to be filled to the brim. You pour 12 to 15 cl into it, so you can swirl without spilling and the aroma gathers in the narrower part above the wine. Hold the glass by the stem, otherwise your hand will warm the wine and leave fingerprints on exactly the part you look through.

Behind the bar, the same principle applies in reverse. The neat glass is small and tulip-shaped because you drink whisky straight, and otherwise the alcohol hits too hard. The rocks glass is heavy and low, made for a single large ice cube, and that is exactly what an old fashioned needs. A dry martini is served in a Nick and Nora, which at 14 or 20 cl is smaller than a classic martini glass and therefore warms up less quickly.

Lead-free crystal glass is clear and thin, but thin also means vulnerable at the point where the stem meets the bowl. Most breakage happens not while drinking but while washing up, when you hold the bowl in your hand and twist the stem. So hold a glass by the bowl and let the stem rest loosely in your other hand.

The machine-blown ranges are dishwasher safe, on a short programme and not too hot. Place them upright in a rack where the stems do not touch each other. Mouth-blown models should be washed by hand in warm water without detergent and polished afterwards with a lint-free cloth. Limescale streaks come off with a splash of vinegar in the rinsing water.

If you still don't know which grape variety you serve most often, the overview of all wine glasses is a better place to start, or the red wine glasses if you already want to go in that direction. The Performance, Veloce, and WineWings series have their own sections in the menu, as do the decanters that made RIEDEL famous. And if you already have the glassware but are missing the tools to go with it, take a look at the bar tools.