The prophet who said in Barcelona that life is too short to drink bad wines

BarcelonaMaximilian Riedel, the eleventh generation of the family that created Riedel glasses, has visited Barcelona to explain to Catalan fans how a wine can become very bad if we don't drink it from the right glass. And he made his point with a statement we'll all agree with: "Life is too short to drink bad wines."

He says this in an interview with journalist Empar Moliner and me a few hours before Maximilian gives his first master class in the auditorium of the Hotel Majestic in Barcelona (which he chose because he's a client of his). He tells me that his explanations are straightforward, delivered in slow, fluid English. He laughs when he says this, confident that he knows what he's doing, because the Riedel man, as he is popularly known, travels the world to impart the same experience. The importer of his glasses, Jordi Segura's company Euroselección, was responsible for ensuring that he visited Barcelona for two intense days.

We return to the interview with Maximilian. He looks jovial for his 48 years, dressed in a very elegant dark suit with a red tie, which he ties with the handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. In the interview, we asked him about the ideal glass for our sparkling wines, and he suggested we avoid a flute glass because it's narrow and will hide all the aromas. "You should use a wide-mouthed glass, like a wine glass or a champagne glass," and he told us to test it at home. First lesson of the day: goodbye to flutes.

I ask him about the wines he likes to drink, and he makes a fundamental distinction: when he's in a country, he wants to try the local wines. So, in the restaurants he's visited in Barcelona, (the Pure of Nandu Jubany and Eldelmar, by the Torres brothers and Gallant) He ordered Catalan wines. And he tells me the name of one of the wines he's been drinking: El Rocallís, from the Can Ràfols dels Caus winery. "In Sweden and Denmark, they're very clear about it; they drink their wines, the ones they make," he explains, adding that when he's home in Austria, he has his own preferences, which he often explains on his personal Instagram account, where he has almost 600,000 followers.

The Instagram influencer

I tell him it's a influencer of the wine and laughs again. "We must convey happiness in the world of wine," he says because he believes it might reach young people that way. "Young people don't drink wine, right?" I ask him, and he answers: "I didn't either when I was old enough to drink alcohol, because I drank beer—yes, beer, and also vodka. When I was 20, I was still between drinks," Riedel says. Now, there was a day when he realized that, for a good meal, the best drink was wine, and that's how he became interested.

Whether what happened to him still happens to young people now is another story. "Wine is linked to good glasses and restaurants, but in recent years everyone has suffered," says Riedel. On the one hand, because food is expensive; on the other, because there is so much, "too much" wine production; "even brands like Dolce & Gabbana are making wine!" Then perhaps the quality of so much production has declined. In any case, what he's seen is that young people in some countries are drinking cocktails with food in restaurants, so Riedel will soon be launching a new, handcrafted cocktail collection. It's time to adapt to the times we live in.

I ask him another question, this time about his favorite restaurants, and he tells me tapas bars. Vila Viniteca, which has the license to sell the glasses Imported by the company Euroselección, each person has four glasses from the brand's most innovative collection, Veloce, which for the first time under the Riedel brand name has the recommended grape varieties written on it. They are very thin, light glasses, and their refinement gives the sensation of holding an exclusive glass. "They are functional glasses, not so aesthetically pleasing," he told me in the interview. However, seen during the tasting that is about to begin, we can also say that they are beautiful. The four glasses are for the wine varieties Riesling; Chardonnay; Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo; and Cabernet and Merlot. "I won't be a professor speaking to you in a class; I only want to guide you through their sensations," the glassmaker begins. First, we divide the contents of the glass containing the Trimbach Riesling Grand Cru Geisberg 2018 wine into the glasses for the Riesling and Chardonnay varieties. We smell it, and he tells us that "smelling a wine doesn't mean pouring it into the glass, but rather breathing it in, holding it for a while."

Then the magic begins. The aromas change from glass to glass. If in one, the Riesling (the right one because we're drinking a Riesling), the aromas are complex, in the other, the Chardonnay, they aren't in the least. It seems like a different wine, drier, more watery, bitter. "It seems so to us that if we tasted this wine for the first time directly from this glass, we'd start criticizing the winemaker." But the wine isn't to blame, it's the glass.

We repeat the tasting a third time. We return to the Riesling glass for the Riesling, and the flavor is delicious. It's an extraordinary wine. He tells us so, but we all agree because we can confirm it.

From the first wine, we move on to the next three: Louis Jadot Meursault 2022, Josep Drouhin Beaune Cras 1r Cru 2018, and the last, Château Rocheyron 2018. With the red wines, we notice even more what has happened with the two whites. Depending on the glass, the same wine had more tannins and became harsh, very harsh. Maximilian concludes his masterclass to great applause. In an hour, he has managed to make us understand that not everything goes with wine. And we add a nuance to the first sentence he told us in the interview: Life is too short to drink wines from bad glasses.