Georg Riedel is apologizing.

"I am so sorry," he says in his exquisitely polite Austrian way. He's apologizing — on satellite phone from Austria, where his family's 11th-generation glassware factory is located — because I broke a wine glass. Two wine glasses, actually. At $21 a stem.

The glasses were from the Riedel Vinum series that he designed, incorporating principles pioneered by his late father, Claus. It's become a tradition with me, I tell him, to break a Riedel Vinum chardonnay glass every summer during my vacation. The first time, the glass snapped when I was vigorously turning it in my hand, toweling the rim. (Big mistake: Never towel and turn; always air dry.) This summer, I was just absently running my fingers around the glass while I talked to dinner guests. Snap! (Second big mistake: Leave the darn rim alone, Wanda.)

"Everyone wants to tell me about their broken glasses," he says a bit sadly, in the midst of a conversation about his upcoming sold-out glass seminar at Halekulani Oct. 4. "No one wants to tell me how good the wine tastes in these glasses."

Well, not no one.

GETTING IN SHAPE

Although it's a controversial subject, many wine experts, including the prestigious wine writer Robert M. Parker Jr., have come to accept Claus Rieidel's claim that the shape of a wine glass affects the taster's perception of the wine's flavors.

Tradition has long dictated that certain glasses are favored for certain wines: tall flutes for sparkling wines, to preserve the bubbles and allow you to see them; wider, rounder glasses for red wines, to cup the bouquet; steeper-sided glasses for light reds and whites. Many also believe that hand-blown glass and crystal are superior for wine. Besides being beautiful to look at, and often well-weighted so they aren't prone to tipping, the rims of these glasses are thinly beveled, and so more pleasant to the mouth. And, says wine columnist Heath Porter of Honolulu, at a microscopic level, hand-blown glasses and crystal are ridged, creating more surface area to allow air to mix with the wine — and aerating the wine releases the flavors.

But Claus Riedel — and other wineware experimenters — have gone further into the science of tasting, leaving wine lovers wondering if they need to invest in new styles of glassware for the best wine experience. In conversations with Georg Riedel, wine writer Ronn Wiegand and local wine experts, we sought guidance in this area.

Georg Riedel, 56, said his father was first simply interested in creating beautiful wine glasses. In the 1950s, the senior Riedel borrowed a classic shape from nature, the egg, and began producing extremely thinly blown glasses with strikingly simple, clean lines and no embellishment. And he noticed something interesting: Wines seemed to taste better in these glasses, and some wines tasted better in particular shapes.

The theory is this, Georg Riedel explains: With the optimum shape, and just the right size of pour to place the wine in proper relationship to the rim, the taster is able to sniff a single, true layer of the bouquet. Too much distance, or too wide or narrow an area, alter the perception of the wine, he said.

When it's time to taste, the right shape and size of pour — which affects how far back you tilt your head to sip, and how the wine flows onto the tongue — causes the wine to be channeled to the optimal taste receptors. (Learn more at www.riedel.com.)

In 1986, Georg Riedel introduced his contribution to the family tradition: the machined-made Vinum series in shapes based on those developed by his father but at half the price. And he traveled the world to sell the idea. "I was born at a time when Robert Mondavi was making wine and Robert Parker was writing about wine and I was privileged to have the right stemware to offer for the tables of this new wine audience. I am a very lucky person," he said.

SKEPTICS AND SUPPORTERS

While no one argues that Riedel glasses are anything but the finest quality, opinions range widely on the legitimacy of the shape-reveals-flavor concept.

Marketing critic and blogger Seth Godin, writing in Fortune Small Business earlier this year, called Georg Riedel a "fibber" and charges that Riedel's customers believe that wine tastes better because Riedel tells them so. "The very act of believing it makes the statement true."

Godin may not know much about wine, but Chef Mavro sommelier Brian Geiser, an Advertiser wine columnist, is skeptical as well. "It is important that the shape of the glass contain the aroma of the wine and permit the taster to better enjoy the bouquet," he said. And crystal is nice for its beauty. But beyond that, Geiser is not willing to go.

However, Wiegand, a master of wine and master sommelier, and publisher of Restaurant Wine magazine, has no doubt whatsoever that the shape of the glass influences your perception of the flavor of the wine. He recalled Georg Riedel calling on him to do a personal tasting in the 1990s. "We tasted the wines side by side in different glasses and that was thoroughly convincing," he said.

Furthermore, Wiegand said, it's hardly a new concept: "the shape of bordeaux and burgundy glasses and champagne flutes have been more or less set since, at the very least, World War II. They were developed in the regions by growers and tasters and winemakers. Those people who would pooh-pooh Riedel are forgetting basic facts of history."

Kim Karalovich, Advertiser wine columnist and co-owner of The Wine Stop in Honolulu, is a believer, too. "We only taste three things in wine: sweet, sour, bitter, and we feel acidity, tannins, astringency and texture. There is no doubt in my mind that proper glasssware enhances our taste buds." She recalled a recent tasting where she sipped a zinfandel from a bordeaux glass (a taller, straighter-sided glass) and found it too astringent. But when she tasted it in a proper Riedel glass, the astringency disappeared, allowing the fruitiness to prevail and the alcohol to seem very balanced with the flavors.

Master sommelier Chuck Furuya uses Riedel glasses at Vino and Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas. He's fuzzy on the science of how the glasses affect flavor, he said, but he's convinced that it works. "I was skeptical but after I tasted wines side by side, it's a marked difference," he said. And, although the Riedel shapes are based on the historic ones (balloon for red, steeper-sided for white, tall flute for sparkling), he said, "they've taken the concept to the umpteenth degree."

NO NEED TO FUSS

The umpteenth degree is where Weigand gets a bit nervous. His goal in working with restaurants and wine consumers is to simplify and demystify wine, a subject many people find confusing, and he worries that the shape issue will further intimidate some people.

He, like other experts we talked to, suggests that you need only three, or at most four, shapes of wineglass and that you should buy the best you can afford, but this need not be Riedel's top-of-the-line hand-blown Sommelier series at in excess of $40 a stem.

Karalovich agrees: "I don't think that a beginner needs to worry about having the most expensive glasses to enjoy wine. However, it is a good idea to at least have a good red wine glass and a good white wine glass in the cabinet." (The others recommended by Weigand are a sparkling wine flute and, if you enjoy cordials, a dessert wine glass.)

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.