We went wine tasting a few weeks ago in Napa and made quite possibly the greatest discovery in barware that I had to share with the hive! Mr. Penguin and I are blessed/cursed with impossibly hard counter tops, and since moving into our place, we’ve broken/destroyed lots of our plates and glasses. One slip of the hand and its the end of the line for our Ikea balloon wine glasses…they’ve treated us so well, and there we go, smashing them to bits.
One of the wineries we visited had the most beautiful wine glasses, and I asked to know what brand of glass they were.
Our pourer immediately started banging the glasses up against a metal bar. We all kind of freaked out a little bit. Why would you do a silly thing like that with beautiful wine glasses?
Apparently, because you can. The crystal glasses were manufactured by Schott Zwiesel using special additives such as titanium, giving the glasses an incredible strength to stand up against even the most brutal wine glass owners. Above all, the crystal glasses are lead-free.
The line that the Sequoia Winery carries is my favorite, the “Pure Tritan” series.
The cost of the glasses are on par with most nice crystal glasses (6 for $70) only these are built to withstand all the drunken abuse that the Penguins can dole out. This means that you can bring out the nice crystal whenever you want, not just for “special occasions.” Neato!
I can’t seem to find any major retailers that carry them, but they’re available at Cooking.com and a lot of other specialty stores online. Even Overstock.com carries a decent selection at a discount! Look for the “Tritan” series for the break resistant crystal.
All images from Cooking.com
How cool is that! With tile in the kitchen and wood floors in the family room, plus a combined total domestic livestock count of four cats and a dog, FI and I have a semi-serious wine glass breakage problem. To date I solve that by buying glasses on the cheap side; he helps out by accidently walking out with winery glasses whenever we go tasting. But I do get tired of trying to keep the little kitten feet out of the broken glass, since you know they always want to help clean up. I am definately going to look into these!
Any tips on Napa?? We are going to SF/Sonoma and Napa for our honeymoon. Did I miss that post?
Very cool glasses! I’ve never seen them!
They are really Sexy… I really like the top two.
WOW!!!! That is SO amazing!!! I think I need those. Chip-free china and titanium barware…just remind me not to put one of those out for Mr. CP to smash at the end of our ceremony!
Sometimes I wish that Overstock had a registry. I know it would be silly since they’re always running out of stuff, but they have nice furniture and sheets and such. *sigh*
wow…when I read about these I had to find a way to add them to our registry - and lucky me, I did!
They’re available on Amazon since they act as a conduit site for cooking.com.
I work part time at a shop in LA that carries them… I get a discount… if you’re interested, I can get them for you and ship them for like $7 extra… but my discount is usually 20% which is pretty badass….
Let me know!
danathebride at gmail dot com
@karieck05: @kleverkira:
Hi…we are going to Napa for our honeymoon too….via San Simeon/Cambria for our first stop. Where are you staying in Napa?
I’ve registered for these and bought a bunch too. I love them! For NY and NJ brides - they can be found at Fortunoffs
I just created a registry at cooking.com so that I could get these! Now I’m a crazy 4 registries bride. But there are other things I’ve wanted that only cooking.com has, so it had to be done! Thanks for the post, Pengy!
Good find! Just a heads up though… we have the Lenox Unbreakable glasses that Miss ModelT mentioned because I am a spaz… we (erm, I) have broken 2 of them. Two have shattered on us when they were knocked over- one on a boat and one at home. This was somewhat annoying since you know, they didn’t resist breaking as they are supposed to and they were freaking expensive. Does anyone know if these are better than the Lenox ones? I’ll probably get them anyway because they look pretty.
I was eyeing these on Top Chef last night!!! Wow what a coincidence.
Hmmm… now all they need to invent is goblets with sweeping-arm-gesture inhibitors. I’m not a terrible glass-breaker, but I can sure hurl some wine into the air!
Dude. We spent almost forever trying to find the wine glasses for us. After several million hours browsing and visiting we found these. They have a couple of styles at Sur La Table also. It was like coming home finding the Tritan, so techie and yet so pretty! Just like me, heh.
I registered for the Carat Tritan’s at Fortunoff, we got our whole set for our Engagement Party…they are great! Fortunoff carries several of the Tritan lines including the Pure line at really great prices.
litsecretary, we haven’t compeletly decided yet. The FI is in charge of booking and of course he is laggin!
But I looked in Kenwood Inn and would like to stay there. Maybe Mission Inn once even though it is pricey!
Do you know where you are staying yet?
litsecretary, sorry this karieck05 too…for some reason it logs me in differnt sometimes!
Hmmm, I don’t recall me breaking any glasses or plates.
@Mr. Penguin:
Maybe you do the dishes sometime MMMKAY? Hard to break dishes when youre sitting on your ass on the couch.
ZING!
These glasses are hot though huh bood. We must buy. Mama Rikes.
Oh. My. I MUST have these. We registered for (and got) two sets of the high-end acrylic glasses from Williams-Sonoma (over $50 for plastic, yipes!), but those are for water/juice/beer…not wine.
Hubs has a serious breakage problem. We even had to take him to the hospital b/c he managed to slice his finger wide open while breaking a glass. At least the guy was washing it… We lost a bottle of wine a few weeks ago, and last weekend lost our spoon rest. I’m thinking of redoing the kitchen floor in bubble wrap.
absolutely BEAUTIFUL yet practical…LOVE it!! thank you so much for posting about this!
Mrs. Penguin, Sacramento
Age and Occupation: 26, Video & TV Producer/Director/Editor
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Doctor of Physical Therapy
Engagement Date: January 29, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: September 14, 2007
Venue: Winery in the Gold Country
About Me: I'm a silly mess of a girl who, above all else in this world, LOVES the Spice Girls. I eat sushi at least 3 times a week, and feel guilty about how much it costs the other 4 days a week. I love designer jeans and cheap accessories. I don't like sweets, but I love the UCLA Bruins!
I love these! Mr.ModelT and I registered for something similar at Macy’s that Lenox makes and we were impressed with their unbreakable strength!!
http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=210216&PseudoCat=se-xx-xx-xx.esn_results#reviews