Ian Trinkle says people tend to overcomplicate wine glasses.

“I think there’s a tendency to say, ‘You need to have this with that’. Like, champagne flutes are a bit passe at the moment, and people are finally learning you don’t really need them hanging around the home. But there has been that temptation in the past to overcomplicate it.”

Trinkle sells wine glasses at his slick wine store and bar Wineism, in Albion, in Brisbane’s north, but has an extensive background as a sommelier, first in the US, and then Australia where he oversaw the wine lists at restaurants such as Aria Brisbane and Arc Dining (Aria took out the coveted Wine List of the Year award in 2018 under Trinkle’s stewardship). He says his choice of wine glass has evolved over the years.

“When I was working in restaurants, Riedel was king of wine glasses,” Trinkle says. “I really liked, and still do, Zalto. But while they’re beautiful and delicate, they do tend to break quite easily.”

His go-to these days is a hand-blown Gabriel-Glas number made with lead-free crystal. It’s an appropriate pick, because Gabriel-Glas more or less makes just one type of glass, but with a machine-blown variant available if you want to save a bunch of dollars (there’s also a stemless glass angled more towards beer). The hand-blown version typically retails for about $110 a unit in Australia, but you can get a twin pack for $100 if you cast around.

The glass itself combines what you might think as typical characteristics of a red and white glass, with a broad bowl – “the d--- measuring swirl kings? You can still do that,” Trinkle says – matched to a gently conical shape. The glass has a 500-millilitre capacity but doesn’t feel that large, perhaps due to its hand-blown nature, which gives it an elegant, seamless construction (but also a relatively high degree of strength).

“It’s still delicate but a little more sturdy than the Zaltos,” Trinkle says. “I love them. I was at Embla [in Melbourne] and they were using them by the glass. And we got them for Arc when I was there. There’s a simplicity to them. I don’t really like big garish wine glasses.

“It’s sleek, it’s understated. It’s [designed] by a wine critic, Rene Gabriel, and they’re made in Austria. These are hand-blown. We have the manufactured ones that we use day-to-day [at Wineism]. But if you’re getting six or something like that, it’s a great showpiece. If you’re drinking riesling, awesome; pinot, great; and you can use them for shiraz and champagne.”

And if you really need something else in the wine cabinet? Trinkle recommends grabbing a couple of bigger burgundy glasses for a barolo or other cellared reds.

“And then I have my plastic Plumms for pool-time enjoyment,” he says. “They’re mostly filled with spritzers and daiquiris, that sort of thing. And that’s pretty much it.”

Gabriel-Glas gold edition hand-blown glass mygabrielglas.com