Feast for the eyes

Tableware is coming of age as dinner hosts aim to make the perfect impression.

When you're testing the quality of a wine glass, always do it with red wine because it is five times more complex than white," says Herve Drouin, managing director and general manager, Zwiesel Asia Pacific, as he leads not a wine-tasting but a glass-tasting session.

When someone tells you the perfect wine glass can have a profound effect on the wine-tasting experience, you're a bit sceptical. Fine, a great-looking glass may induce you to pick it up, but actually affect the taste?

The audience in the room discovers first-hand that a suitable wine glass is designed to enhance the sensorial components of a wine type, and Drouin has "I told you so" writ all over his face.

"For some reason, Indians aren't well acquainted with fine handblown glassware, although they can name at least five brands of the finest china," says Oscar Fernandes, CEO, Bohemian Crystal Company that has been retailing Zwiesel in India for seven years.

He's looking to change that, as are other brands like Riedel Crystal, which is retailed from home design destination Good Earth.

Stemware manufacturers like Riedel and Zwiesel, though not quite in the same league as Baccarat, have refined wine glass design to the point of having a unique size and shape for almost every wine variation. The top-of-the-line Sommelier range from Riedel can cost up to Rs 22,000 for a set of six. It's technical, aesthetic and hedonistic!

It's a trying time for dinner hosts. Long gone are the days when guests would overlook the threadbare tablecloth and disparate crockery in favour of the quality of food served. Convene a dinner gathering and you're likely to have at least one guest who will turn over the cutlery to check its provenance.

Patchi, in India, offers not just luxury chocolates but also sells select pieces of crystal, silver and porcelain brands, such as Christian Dior, Cristal de Sevres and Royal Silver.

Ravissant, a designer chain in London, Mumbai and Delhi known for its sterling silver objets d'art, has been the franchisee for luxury tableware brands for over 15 years. Today, you'll find Rosenthal, Versace, Bvlgari, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton at their boutiques, and customers snap them up as soon as they arrive.

According to Gia Sharan, sales and marketing director, Ravissant, Rosenthal finds the most takers owing to its "affordability". The range retails from Rs 1,500 to 50,000 per piece! Don't gasp, the Versace range will set you back by Rs 6,000-1,20,000 a piece.

"Most customers, if buying a complete dinner service for 12 persons, will actually buy for 16, to account for breakage," according to Sharan. You do the math.

Complete dinner services can be quite unwieldy. A dinner set for 12 persons at century-old Japanese brand Noritake can make up 95 pieces in all, and set you back by upwards of Rs 3.5 lakh, on account of its 18-carat gold trimming.

"These dinner sets often become heirlooms. We had this customer come in and say she received a dinner set as a wedding present decades ago and is now passing it down to her daughter-in-law," says Pascal Fernandes, marketing manager, Noritake (western region).

Noritake is present in Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi and is probably the most aspirational tableware brand of choice for the upper-middle class Indian.

All this reliance on opulence isn't unfamiliar. As Made for Maharajas, a design diary on princely India suggests, maharajas indulged unabashedly in their penchant for gleaming silver and crystal, commissioning trunkfuls of crockery from Copeland, Minton, and Royal Worcester. Today's princely set have the option of commissioning an entire dinner service from Frazer & Haws in sterling silver.

The famed producer of silver collectibles set up a manufacturing unit in India over a decade ago and have since been dishing out (pun intended) tableware that's a melange of classic English design and Indian craftsmanship.

Their trousseau collection includes the Tea Set Victorian, apparently a coveted four piece set that will cost you Rs 2,67,340. Or get yourself a champagne flute that will contend with the most prestigious cuvee for value, their sterling silver flutes cost over Rs 13,000 a piece.

Ravissant also does cutlery in silver, studded with semi-precious stones, ranging from Rs 7,000 to 20,000 per piece.

Despite the widening retail presence of these brand in India (most brands are expanding beyond Delhi and Mumbai), there are still those that are ordered by the wife to lug back china from business trips to Sri Lanka and Japan.

Retailers are even sprucing up their customer care services to induce local spending. If a particularly clumsy (or inebriated) guest lets a piece slip to the floor, fret not, for it can be replaced.

Most retailers replace items in three to four weeks' time and stock up on catalogues so customers have entire collections to choose from, even the limited edition ones. Ravissant also offers the added advantage of selling individual pieces so you are not restricted by prearranged combinations.

If you're the type to shun the familiar and chase the esoteric, but still have deep pockets, try introducing into your dinner service a piece or two designed by Michael Aram, the American-born, Delhi-based metalware artist.

Aram's work is entirely handmade using traditional techniques, and for between Rs 5,000 and 20,000, his pieces can be yours to show off and others' to covet. Maithili Ahluwalia's Bungalow 8 in Mumbai also offers some unique, one-off, vintage glassware.

"A few years ago we commissioned a study with the Hilton chain in the Asia-Pacific region where they replaced the stemware they were then using with Zwiesel wine glasses. You won't believe this but they nearly tripled their sale of wine in that period." says Drouin.

It may be just that easy, then, to get three times the number of people talking about the grand soirees you throw.