There’s nothing like drinking wine out of a well-made wine glass – David Kong, founder of GLASVIN, believes this to be true. In our conversation with Kong, he shared, “When I was living in New York, I would drink out of really great wine glasses at nice restaurants and they’d be really light and thin. But, the main problem with them was that they were very expensive.” From there, Kong made it his mission to make wine drinking more accessible without sacrificing design.
In 2019, GLASVIN was born. Learn more about this New York-based stemware company making handmade, hand-blown wine glasses which are blow to impress and priced to break. Read more about GLASVIN’s mission and values here and shop the glassware on our Coravin marketplace.
Watch the video and see the full transcript below.
Hand-blown Glassware for Every Wine Drinker by GLASVIN
Lindsay Buck, Coravin: Today I'm talking to David Kong, founder of GLASVIN, whose products we carry on our marketplace at Coravin.com. GLASVIN was named one of the best products of 2020 by Food & Wine Magazine. Welcome, David.
David Kong, GLASVIN: Thank you for having me.
LB: How did you discover this gap in the market for accessible, hand-blown glassware?
DK: First of all, thanks for having me on the series. And, I just wanted to start by saying, I love Coravin. I've been using Coravin for, I think, five years – very early on from when you started and I probably use it every day. I always have it handy. Like you, our main goal is to make wine drinking accessible to a greater number of people. When I was living in New York, I would drink out of these really great wine glasses at these really nice restaurants and they’d be really light and thin. But, the main problem with them was that they were very expensive. They were probably $60 per stem, which is quite the stretch. For me, especially as I was getting into wine, I was really thinking about how we could create something that'd be similar in quality and feel to really elevate the drinking experience, but make that accessible to a much broader category of consumers.
LB: Yeah, absolutely. You have a beautiful product. Can you talk about the difference between machine-produced glassware and hand-blown? And in what ways does hand-blown glass enhance the drinking experience?
DK: That’s a great question. That's really the core value that we think our product brings to consumers. Once you use a hand-blown wine glass, it's really hard to go back to machine made glassware. You can see with a hand-blown glass, the stem is really, really thin. So, when you hold it, it's really easy to just hold with two fingers and then you're swirling it all night. It's a lot easier to swirl. It's also probably half the weight of other glasses