Coca-Cola unveils a sommelier contour glass for tasting Coke

Coca-Cola iconic bottle’s design, that turns 100 next year, has been leveraged to create a new distinctive drinkware piece, a wine glass. It retains the brand’s signature curved lines and allows to savor the brown soda liquid just like refined wines, exploring the complex profile of the sugary drink with all its aromas, flavors and mouthfeel.

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Photo: Coca-Cola + Riedel glass, www.coca-colastore.com

The piece was developed by Riedel Crystal, a 258-year-old custom glassmaker that is known throughout the professional sommeliers’ world for producing varietal-specific stemware and decanters. The glassmaker started to develop the glass design that would highlight the Coke’s visual heritage a year ago. The result of their work is an elegant glass that looks like a child of the iconic Coke contour bottle, with some recognizable Stella Artois chalice’s influence. The glass is designed to unlock an impressive sensory experience of drinking Coke.

Back in April 2013, a panel of about 30 executives and marketers who were experts in Coca-Cola’s flavors range, tested 18 Riedel + Coke glass prototypes in Atlanta. The task was quite complex because the developers didn’t (and actually, couldn’t) know for sure what taste profile exactly the drink had, and the glassmaker had to use intuition developing various glasses that were supposed to highlight various nuances of the drink.

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Photo: A set of two Coca-Cola + Riedel glasses, www.coca-colastore.com

 

“We are accentuating the aromas and details ofCoca-Cola’s fresh lemon character blended with malt, and its sweetness and acidity,” he says. “This glass also tames Coca-Cola’s effervescence, which it shares in common with champagne and parfait, to the point where it lingers beautifully on the palate and produces this amazing freshness,” commented CEO Georg Riedel, the 10th generation owner of glassmaking Austrian company.

The glass can be purchased at the virtual Coca-Cola Store for $19.9, the set of two glasses costs $29.9.