HERITAGE luxury crystal glass brand Moser and award-winning chef José Pizarro have collaborated to create beautiful, limited edition glasses in celebration of what many consider Spain’s finest drink – sherry.
The Pizarro glass from Moser
This collaboration came about when Petr Lava, the globally renowned Creative director of Moser: the most luxurious Czech brand, met José Pizarro, the Spanish Chef who owns three London restaurants and is one of 100 españoles – the prestigious list that recognises the top 100 Spaniards around the world, on a criteria of how they have brought their talents to the masses and demonstrated Spanish pride through their work.
Their conversation about Jose’s passion – food and drink – flowed into discussions about the traditional small sherry glass and led to Pizarro being invited to Karlovy Vary, the home of the Moser glassworks and its artisan workers, to embark on a project designed to give life to sherry and encourage more people to explore and enjoy the fortified wine that is a pride of Spain.
José Pizarro, London-based Spanish Chef and owner of José Tapas Bar, Pizarro, and José Pizarro
In the UK, sherry is an under-appreciated pleasure. Somehow, the English managed to turn this most convivial drink into a shorthand indicator of a certain type of puritanical, lower middle-class, drawing-room-comedy-aunt respectability. In doing so, the English did sherry, Spain, and their own tastebuds an enormous disservice.
Sherry is delicious: warm, aromatic, richly flavoured, and intensely rewarding. A drink that dances; fulfilling, and ravishing, sherry benefits immensely from being freed from little schooners and having a voluptuous glass to play in – and with this Moser piece, it certainly has that.
The Pizarro glass from Moser breaks with all tradition by being long-stemmed and generous. The volume and shape of the glass was inspired by the shape of José Pizarro’s own cupped hands: a wonderful, two-fold symbol of the generosity of spirit of both the man and the wine. Drinking sherry from the ‘Pizarro’ glass is an absolute pleasure for the senses. The curved bowl of the glass allows you to fully savour the aroma of the sherry before finding delightful consummation in the taste of the wine.
This glass has very seductive qualities that it is happy to lend to the lucky one that drinks from it! As it sits so very comfortably in the hand, it adds elegance to every movement you make. Gigantic wine glasses have become fashionable in recent years, but this beautiful object is constructed on a human scale, allowing you to make serious eye contact when it is raised to your lips. The subtle glint and flash when the delicate gold edging around the base catches the light as the glass is raised and lowered is playful and entrancing – as you will feel too, when drinking from it.
Detailing of the Pizarro glass from Moser
Hand-blown, cut and crafted, the Pizarro glass from Moser is an absolutely unique design, and only three hundred of them have been produced. All are signed by José Pizarro.
The glass has been endorsed by the Consejo Regulador who control all things sherry:,“We are delighted with this glass designed by José Pizarro and Moser which positions sherry in the very high standards this wine deserves. We do believe that the drinking experience of Sherry will be enhanced with this special glass and, as the Sherry Regulatory Council, we are happy to endorse it.” Consejo Regulador de Jerez.
by Rachel McCormack
Priced at £300 for a set of two glasses, the ‘Pizarro’ glass from Moser is available to purchase here or via Pizarro, in Bermondsey London.