How handmade wine glasses are made. A priest's vision, blown by hand in Lower Austria.

Hans Denk, the priest with a famous nose

Hans Denk was a Catholic priest near the Wachau and Kamptal in Lower Austria. He baptized winemakers' children and soon became known as one of the finest tasters in the country. Winemakers asked his opinion on new vintages and blends, and some joked that he had the nose of God. Willi Bründlmayer recalls how Denk could name a wine's site blind.

In the early 1990s Denk began to imagine a glass worthy of the wines he loved. In 2001 he started working with Zalto, a small glassworks near the Czech border, in a region with a long glassmaking tradition thanks to its forests.

Thin glass, straight walls and old angles

Denk's ideas were simple to state. The wine should take center stage, so the glass must be as thin as possible. The walls should be straight rather than curved, which he believed gave more precision on the nose, rising from a wide base that gives the wine plenty of air. An engineer on the project suggested building in angles taken from the tilt of the earth, angles the makers say ancient Greeks and Romans used in their amphoras.

Over about three years Denk tasted more than 100 prototypes, changing angles, bowl sizes and the flatness of the base. Find out how small changes, such as five millimeters in height, made a real difference to the taste.

The craft on screen, step by step

The glassmaking scenes are the heart of the film. Raw materials melt in a furnace at about 1,400°C that runs nonstop for years between rebuilds. A blower gathers exactly the right amount of glass on a pipe and blows a small first bulb. A team of six to eight people then works in sequence: the bulb goes into a pre-mold, then into the final wooden or metal mold, soaked in water so steam keeps the glass from sticking. The film notes that a wooden mold lasts only 400 to 500 uses.

Next, a master pulls the stem out of the extra glass in one piece, and another shapes the foot with a wooden tool. These are the two hardest steps to learn. The glass cools slowly in a belt furnace to avoid stress, then the top is cut off, the rim is ground and lightly fire-polished, and every glass is checked for shape and bubbles. The makers argue that a hand-blown bowl has a rougher inner surface than machine glass, which they say helps lift the aromas.

Four shapes for every style

Denk ended with a short range built around the character of the wine rather than the grape. The Burgundy glass holds almost a liter for Pinot Noir and oaked whites. The Bordeaux glass has steeper walls for more tannic wines. The Universal glass suits mineral whites such as Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, and the White Wine glass, with its steeper base, keeps freshness for Champagne and sweeter Rieslings. The makers stress that one grape can shine in several of these glasses, depending on the winemaking style and your own taste.

In restaurants and wineries

The film also visits Palais Coburg in Vienna, where the sommelier encourages tasting one wine from several shapes and lets guests choose, for example a sparkling wine in a Burgundy glass for aroma or a Champagne glass for the bubbles. He also explains why they never polish their glasses: tiny scratches can trap dust and, in time, smell. See the winemakers' view, the challenge of training new blowers, and why the makers say a good glass cannot improve a wine, only reveal it.