So we use and love the Zalto Champagne glass for bubbles; which Grassl glass is comparable? Or is this just not a wine for which Grassls are appropriate/
Counselor - I’d steer you to the Mineralité and Liberté. But, if you can wait, we just finished our champagne glass in the factory and are churning them out. The company now has two lines, a restaurant series which I’ve referred to as a tasting glass and the Vigneron series, which is our Zalto/Gabriel competitor. The restaurant series will be adding a champagne stem and a water glass shortly as that’s what we’ve been asked to do by those customers.
The commentary here is exceptionally flattering and, as stated above, humbling.
There is a story to tell regarding these glasses and their origin. There is also a Forbes article likely to come out soon about this adventure. But in a nutshell, my ‘gray market’ adventure with Zalto grew into a little business that only exists because of the people on this board.
I’ll be phasing out of Zalto stems soon. Frankly, due to how I bring them in (bypassing US distribution channels), irritates them. But, rather than engaging me, they’ve made the business decision to be very difficult on those I’ve purchased from or thru and I really feel bad that those sellers, who are within their rights as I am mine, have to deal with what they do should they be found as a source to my sales.
Alexander Mackh (Grassl owner and designer) and I met by happenstance. And what went from an email to some texting, to a phone call inside 6 days, launched this brand and went from a simple introduction to a legitimate glass in less than 6 months. In 2019 we made it into 11 countries and sold 22,000 glasses. This year we will be in 20 countries, have committed to over 50,000 units from our factory, have had 20+ winemakers put our glasses into their tasting rooms - with names like Roulot, and Marcus Goodfellow among them.
But, I make mistakes too. Missed orders because I do have a day job with an SFO startup, we have had manufacturing issues we think we have resolved, orders to wrong addresses because people move, and any other assorted new company flubs. We work hard and with as much sincerity towards the customer’s satisfaction as humanly possible to always make it right.
We operate from the mindset that it is impossible to make enough money on any single order to matter but we can lose everything we’ve worked towards by not doing the right thing.
I cannot ever possibly thank all of you for making this become what it looks like it may be. And, if you’ll grant my ‘to error is human’, I’ll do what I can to solve a problem I created.
There will a BD post and sale - the placeholder is there -and we have a full container about to leave Slovakia with reinforcements. I’ve also put up three auction items for the group to bid on to support the board’s costs to operate.
2020 should be a tremendous amount of fun. May I have the pleasure and honor of raising a glass with many of you in the rest of my years.
Sincerely and gratefully,
Chris
