In the 20 or so years in which they’ve been around, these handblown Austrian glasses have acquired a cult-like international following.
Victoria Moore, WINE CORRESPONDENT, The Telegraph | 26 August 2023
Last summer, 67 Pall Mall, the private members’ club for wine lovers, sent out what must surely rank as one of the most first-world-problem apologies of all time. ‘We have used Zalto glassware exclusively in the Club since opening,’ it began, before explaining that, because of production delays, the club had been ‘forced’ to put ‘alternative glassware’ on the tables. The horror!
But that’s how people get about Zalto. In the 20 or so years in which they’ve been around, these handblown Austrian glasses have acquired a cult-like international following. They are used for service in 19 out of France’s 29 three-star Michelin restaurants. Most sommeliers and wine writers I know – including me – have at least a couple of the huge, extremely thin, straight-sided Zalto Denk’Art Universals (right) in the cupboard. Along with the Rolex Oyster, Zaltos were one of six ‘perfect things’ to be given an ‘unimprovable award’ by The Wall Street Journal, which I suppose makes the price tag – the ‘use for everything’ Universal is now about £50 a pop – look almost accessible.
I recently met up with Zalto’s GM, Christoph Hinterleitner, in London. He told me a key moment in Zalto’s rise came in 2007 when the German current affairs magazine Stern tested out a bunch of wine glasses in a blind tasting and Zalto took first place in three categories. Wait – a blind tasting of stemware? How does that work? ‘You had to wear an eye mask, and thick glove, like a skiing glove, so you couldn’t feel or see anything.’
In London, I saw Zalto gain traction in the tasting equivalent of word of mouth: you try one, you buy one – or put a pair on your Christmas list. One influencer named her dog Zalto. The Universal became a kind of gold standard. It altered glass fashion. The overall size and shape became familiar even to those who don’t pay Zalto prices (see the Large Wine Glass at Zara Home, £9.99).
Hinterleitner explained that it takes a team of eight to make each glass. But pinning down the story of how Zalto glasses came into being proved impossible as the Hinterleitners, who now run the company, and Kurt Zalto, whose family originally owned it, agree on almost nothing.
Hinterleitner tells me the ‘vision’ belongs to the late Father Hans Denk, incongruously a Catholic priest and influential Austrian wine lover. Denk, he said, felt he was ‘missing the perfect glass’ for the Wachau Grüner Veltliner he loved to drink, believed there must be an alternative to the ‘traditional egg-shape’ and created the Zalto range in collaboration with Kurt Zalto.
Kurt Zalto, who no longer has any involvement with Zalto Glass and left the company over a decade ago, selling them the right to use his name, says he alone conceived of and drew the thin, straight-sided glasses. He credits an Austrian feng shui expert, Thomas Schwäbisch, with one key input – the use of the angle of the tilt of the earth’s axis in the design. But he says when Father Denk – one, he says, of many people to give feedback – came in the picture, the designs were ‘already like they are now’, and only ‘minor changes’ followed. In short, behind one of the world’s most loved and perfect glasses, is a very ugly mess.
