THE CONCEPT that the shape of glass affects the taste of wine was given reality by Claus Riedel, creating a range of elegant and distinctive glassware. Over several decades he refined and developed beautiful glasses to emphasise the intended character of each wine style and, in the process, maintained a family tradition.

Claus Josef Riedel was a ninth-generation glassmaker who succeeded in producing the first wine-specific glassware — termed the Sommeliers collection — in 1973. He recognised that a glass alters the perception of a wine. His revolutionary stemware philosophy was that form should follow function and content command shape.

The result was an incredibly thin, light, long-stemmed series of glasses which served to enhance wine and were a departure from the heavy, cut glassware whose design was to adorn the table.

Born in 1925 Polaun, Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic, Riedel was conscripted into the German Army to fight partisans in Liguria and Tuscany. He was captured by US forces and held near Pisa for ten months. In the course of being repatriated in 1946, Riedel jumped from a train near Innsbruck and found his way to Swarovski Crystal whose founder had been trained by Riedel’s great-grandfather.

In 1947 Riedel returned to Liguria to work as an engineer in Italy and Germany. When his father, Walter, was freed from Soviet captivity after ten years, they jointly purchased a bankrupt glassworks in Kufstein, Austria, recreating a tradition founded in 1756.

Riedel began experimenting with wine glass design in 1957. He detected noticeable variations when the same wine was tasted from differently shaped and sized glasses. Over the next 16 years, he studied the physics of wine delivery to the mouth and taste buds, experimenting with changes of shape and thickness to show greater complexity, harmony, depth and balance in wine. To critics he responded: “Aesthetics and excellence are my criteria, not mere convenience”.

His Burgundy Grand Cru glass of 1958, dubbed “the goldfish bowl” on account of its size as the world’s largest wine glass, capable of taking 37fl oz, was placed two years later in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It has since been joined by 126 other Riedel glasses.

His designs were recognised by winning the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Brussels and the Corning Museum of Glass award for the “Most Beautiful Glass in the World” (for his Exquisit Bordeaux). In recognition of his work, the honorary title of professor was conferred by the Austrian Government in 1965.

In 1994 his first son, Georg, succeeded him as president of the family firm and has continued to develop the range of glassware and become a global ambassador for his father’s work.

Claus Riedel is survived by his fourth wife, Ute, two sons and a daughter.

Claus Riedel, glass designer and maker, was born on February 19, 1925. He died on March 17, 2004, aged 79.