A modern glass for modern wine

It’s truly a thing of beauty: the sleek design, the incredible curves, the feel while handling, the unrivalled performance — while this may sound like the beginning of a review for the latest sports car, it is also a fitting description of a Zalto wineglass.

Handcrafted in Austria from lead-free crystal, the mouth-blown stemware is considered by many to be among the best wine glasses on the market. Everything seemingly tastes better from Zalto.

The glasses were inspired by pastor and wine expert Hans Denk’s desire for a glass that is “completely self-effacing, almost invisible, and allows the wine to make a pure appearance without any influence”.

Thus, the signature Zalto Denk’Art series came to be, which has since achieved cult status. Rather than creating glasses tailored to specific varieties, Zalto glasses were designed based on the wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy — and the red wines each produces — with the range growing to include universal, white-wine, Champagne, and sweet-wine glasses.

Now, two decades since the first launch, Zalto has released its boldest new glass — one that stays true to the design principles of its predecessors while looking to the future. It considers new vinification methods and ageing techniques, such as longer fermentation times, mash fermentation, oxidative processing, and extended time on lees. Winemaking of this kind often results in wine that focuses less on fruit and more on structure. Modern wines call for a modern glass, designed not for a specific variety or region but calibrated for the wine’s structure instead.

Cue the Zalto Balance: a glass designed to present these complex wines in harmonious form, without distorting their character. It is slightly smaller than its predecessors, with the characteristic slant even more emphasised and a noticeably shorter stem. I took the impressive glass for a test drive up the west coast, where we opened a superlative bottle of 2015 South African Semillon.

It is unfined and unfiltered, with the grapes basket-pressed and transferred to old casks for natural fermentation, after which the wine spent 18 months on the lees, ticking all the boxes for the type of wine for which this glass was designed. Admittedly, this wine is remarkable no matter what, but in a comparison of different glasses the Balance positively sang. The wine was magnificently expressive from this new glass — the nose more pronounced (owing to the larger opening and more direct distance thanks to the shorter bowl) and the palate delivering both precision and nuance.

In many ways, the glass is targeted at the growing natural-wine movement, with winemakers looking to both the past and future, using age-old techniques and modern methods to create wines of complexity and structure.

While the highest end of the wine market has long been focused on traditional, old-world, classic wines, it’s refreshing for a brand as prestigious and influential as Zalto to turn its attention to these exciting, newer styles of wine and so recognise the market to which they cater. greatdomaines.co.za

3 FOR BALANCE: 

Gabriëlskloof Whole Bunch Syrah 2023

 A wine that falls into winemaker Peter-Allan Finlayson’s experimental project range, this beautiful syrah is whole-bunch fermented for 1O days before pressing, after which portions are aged in either steel tanks or older barrels. It displays notes of vibrant dark fruit alongside white pepper and warm spice on the palate. R240 a bottle.

Intellego The Sleeping Co-Pilot 2023

A skin-contact Viognier from winemaker Jurgen Gouws, this orange wine gets its distinct amber colour as a result of two weeks of whole-bunch fermentation on the skins in open tanks. It’s a stunner of a wine — fresh and juicy with a touch of ginger and all the beautiful florality you expect from the variety. R315 a bottle.

Testalonga El Bandito Lekker 2024

Hand-harvested and whole-bunch pressed, Lekker is a magnificent chenin blanc crafted by Craig and Carla Hawkins — arguably the leaders of natural wine in South Africa — and bottled only in magnums. It’s a wine of incredible tension and texture, with beautiful fruit, great acidity, and a wonderful sea-salt minerality on the finish. R910 a bottle.

From the February edition of Wanted, 2025