Wine News

For wine drinkers wishing to remain totally in the dark about the wines they are tasting, Riedel Crystal has made it possible. The renowned Austrian glass producer has introduced the Blind Blind Tasting Glass, a jet-black, opaque glass that masks a wine's colour.

A blind tasting is a wine tasting in which the taster attempts to evaluate and/or identify wines without knowing their identity. The rationale is that only through blind tasting can a true assessment of a wine's style and quality be made, so powerful is subjectivism. By eliminating knowledge of a wine's colour, the new Riedel glass prevents tasters from judging a wine through visual factors, such as clarity and deepness of hue.

Like the rest of Riedel's Sommelier collection, the Blind Blind glasses are handmade from full-lead crystal. The blackness of the glass is obtained by adding the metal manganese oxide - which is used to tint glass purple, or black if more is added - during the manufacturing process.