Hip Tastes Blog

"Nice Stems"
filed under: Goods & Gadgetry, Ramblings

I'll never forget that line from one of my all-time favorite 90s teen drama-comedies, Clueless. It's the way the film's heroine, Beverly Hills uber teen Cher, first meets her love interest. The impossibly suave (of course he turns out to be gay) hipster breathes this to her in class after gazing up her, admittedly, great gams. Ah, high school.

But did you know that legs are actually out these days? Yes indeedy, according to celebrated wine glass maker Riedel. The maker of the super expensive and therefore coveted Sommelier series of stemware has released a line of stemless, er, stemware, apparently to cater to the anti-establishment wino in all of us.

The tumbler-esque glasses look like real wine glasses only, you guessed it, are sans stems. What may initially sound like a calculated product-tinkering ploy to bring a new sub-set of wine glass consumers under Riedel's umbrella (which, by the way, this pretty much is) has actually proven to be a smashing success. Savvy shoppers are snapping up these amputees like they're going out of style (they're not), and the company recently added "philanthropic" to its list of descriptors with the release of a limited edition of the glass in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The pink-bottomed stemless "O" series glasses feature a concentration of fuchsia at the base that fades up the sides. WineEnthusiast.com reports that Pink "O" glasses are specifically designed for drinking Chardonnay and Viognier but are also "the perfect size and shape for all-purpose use." Better yet, Riedel will donate 15% of sales from Pink "O" to the Living Beyond Breast Cancer Foundation. As if that weren't enough: these suckers are dishwasher safe.

Two of the pretty tumblers cost about $19 and are available through various online merchants.

www.riedel.com

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Posted by Courtney on October 21, 2005 03:54 PM