Stölzle Lausitz

Start with the glass you use most often. Power is the workhorse series: a wide 52 cl bowl for red wine, a more compact 40 cl glass for white, plus a 50 cl tumbler and a 24 cl flute in the same design language. Symphony is more generous, with 71 cl and 64 cl for Bordeaux and Burgundy, and 54 cl and 40 cl for the rest of the range. If you are mainly looking for red wine glasses, choose one over 50 cl, because below that capacity a full-bodied red wine does not have enough room to open up without filling the glass to the brim.

For the bar, Kyoto and Revolution are the logical choice, with 43, 37 and 32 cl tumblers and a 39 cl highball glass. For sparkling wines, the range runs from the narrow 19 cl Ultra to the wider 29 cl Symphony. The narrower the champagne flute, the longer the bubbles last; the wider it is, the more aroma you capture.

Never fill a wine glass beyond its widest point. With a 71 cl Symphony, that means about 15 cl of wine, which may seem little but leaves exactly enough air to retain the aroma when you swirl the glass. With a 40 cl Power, you end up with just under 12 cl. If you see bottles emptying faster than expected, you are almost always pouring too generously rather than too often.

The tumblers from Kyoto and Revolution are heavy enough for one large ice cube, and that is exactly what they are designed for. A negroni is stirred in a mixing glass and strained over fresh ice into such a tumbler, so the drink gets cold without becoming watered down within two minutes. For water, soft drinks, and long drinks, choose the taller sizes from the same series, which you can place in the tumbler glasses section alongside other brands.

Lead-free crystal glass is clearer and thinner than ordinary soda-lime glass, but it is also more susceptible to limescale. Stölzle Lausitz treats its glassware against deposits, so it stays clear instead of becoming cloudy after dozens of washes. This only works if you wash it on a short glassware cycle and rinse it immediately with soft water; if a drop remains, the limescale will show exactly where the light falls.

Store glasses with the bowl facing upward and make sure the stems do not touch one another in the rack. Polish with a lint-free cloth and hold the bowl instead of twisting the stem, because that is where it breaks. A wine stopper on the bottle also saves you from having to rinse a second glass the next day.

If this isn't the brand you're looking for, the obvious German alternative is: Schott Zwiesel makes crystal glass with titanium in its composition and occupies a similar segment, with its own series classification. If you'd rather compare more broadly by shape instead of brand, all the wine glasses from the entire shop are gathered together, sorted by capacity and grape variety. And if you're looking for the recipe instead of the glass, for example for the flutes from this series, you'll find the proportions and the correct pouring order in the kir royal .