Designed to end wine-glass excess, Richard Brendon and Jancis Robinson’s Original Universal Wine Glass proves that true luxury lies not in choice, but intelligent restraint.
The Universal Wine Glass
There is a quiet absurdity to modern wine drinking. Cupboards groan under the weight of specialist stemware - Burgundy bowls the size of goldfish tanks, spindly flutes, glasses designed for grapes so obscure they require explanation. Somewhere along the way, pleasure acquired paraphernalia.
The Universal Wine Glass, designed by Richard Brendon in collaboration with Jancis Robinson OBE MW, is a deliberate rebuttal. It asks a simple, radical question: what if one glass was genuinely enough?
Richard Brendon and Jancis Robinson
To understand the ambition of the project, one must understand Robinson herself. Jancis Robinson is not merely a wine writer; she is the wine writer. The first person outside the trade to become a Master of Wine, she has spent five decades shaping how the world tastes, talks about, and understands wine.
Her Oxford Companion to Wine is the discipline’s definitive reference work. Her weekly Financial Times column is read religiously on both sides of the Atlantic. She advises cellars, challenges received wisdom, and has a rare gift for cutting through mystique with intelligence and precision. Crucially, Robinson has always been sceptical of excess - especially when it interferes with the wine itself.
Robinson had long argued that most wine glasses were either unnecessarily large, misleadingly shaped, or designed to flatter the drinker rather than the drink. Overblown bowls encouraged over-pouring; narrow rims trapped aromas; theatrical forms distracted from what mattered.
The brief she and Brendon set was uncompromising: a single stemmed glass that would work for almost every wine, from Champagne to Sherry, Riesling to Rioja - without ceremony, without compromise.
Richard Brendon’s contribution was not flourish but editing. The resulting glass has a softly tulip-shaped bowl - large enough to allow aroma to develop, restrained enough to prevent alcohol dominance. The rim is fine, directing wine precisely onto the palate. The proportions feel balanced, not ostentatious, sitting naturally in the hand rather than performing for the table.
Made from lead-free crystal by master craftspeople, the glass is remarkably light, yet practical enough for everyday use - including the dishwasher. This is luxury designed to be used, not tiptoed around.
Robinson herself has noted its enthusiastic adoption by sommeliers and restaurateurs across Europe and the United States - a rare consensus in a world famously allergic to agreement.
The genius of the Universal Wine Glass lies not in what it adds, but in what it removes. Fewer decisions. Fewer objects. Less fuss between bottle and pleasure. In an age obsessed with specialisation, it is a quietly radical object - proof that true luxury often lies in simplicity, intelligence... and knowing when to stop.
Jancis Robinson explains in her own words:
Click here to learn more about Richard Brendon.