Why Wine Glasses Matter: Inside Glasvin with Founder David Kong

Check out all the great events Laurie has on the calendar in 2026 on her website at TheWineCoach.com/events including a few spaces still left in her Tuscany tour this October!

In this episode, David Kong shares how he went from finance to founding Glasvin, the wine glass brand redefining how wine should actually taste. We dig into why glass construction matters more than most people realize, how the right shape can elevate the entire tasting experience, and what separates a great wine glass from the ones quietly sabotaging your favorite bottle. David also talks about expanding the Glasvin lineup, proper care and maintenance (yes, your dishwasher has opinions), and why the brand has become a go-to in top restaurants. Along the way, he introduces Somm.ai, his data-driven platform helping wineries and restaurants sell smarter. The conversation wraps with a relaxed, wine-nerd-fueled chat about favorite bottles—because no good wine talk should end without one. 

Check out the Glasvin line of glasses at Glas.vin and if you use code SIPPING you'll receive a 10% discount off your purchase.

Transcript

Laurie Forster (00:29)
back to The Sipping Point. Now this week, we're going to talk a little less about wine itself and a little bit more about the glasses we serve the wine in, why they're so important and a new that's been on the market since 2020 that's disrupting the whole wine glass industry. But just a reminder before we get to that, that I have a lot of great events coming up in February. Go to thewinecoach.com slash events. Just click on events at the top.

On February 12th, I have a great event called Art Uncorked in Ocean City, Maryland. It is a fundraiser for the Art League of Ocean City, but more importantly, it's a whole evening of delicious Italian food, wine, paired with amazing artwork. And we are in a kickoff Valentine's or Galentine's weekend in style. And then on the 26th of February, I'm doing Sip in Style in Oxford, Maryland, pairing up

with Beth Hashen of Levity and Witt, a great clothing store. And we are gonna give you the spring styles for fashion and wine. And it's just gonna be an evening to be with your girlfriends, your mother, your sister, whomever, learn a little bit of the styles that are coming for this spring and fashion. And I'll introduce you to some food and wine pairings that I think are in style for the season as well. Go to thewinecoach.com slash events and you can get.

all the information. All right. David Kang is the founder of Glassvin, the premium hand blown wine glass brand that took off in 2020 and was named a top product of the year by Food and Wine Magazine. A former New York City hedge fund manager turned wine world disruptor, David blends data design and serious wine obsession to rethink how we experience what's in the glass. Alongside Glassvin, he also built SOM AI.

powerful wine sales and analytics platform used by some of the biggest names in the business. And during COVID, he helped those restaurants generate over $650,000 in wine sales. He's the mind behind GV Home, Glassfin's everyday friendlier sister line. And yes, you guessed it, he's a 30 under 30. So let's go ahead and welcome David into the show.

Laurie Forster (02:49)
David, welcome to The Sipping Point.

David (02:51)
Pleasure to be here.

Laurie Forster (02:53)
Awesome. Well, I'm so excited to talk to you all about your company, Glasvin, and your wine glassware. I think the listeners know that I beat this probably too much of this drum about how important the wine glass is to the tasting experience. So I'm excited to talk to you about that. But I'd love to start with, I know you used to manage hedge funds. You were a finance guy. And how does a guy in finance end up

David (03:16)
and just

Laurie Forster (03:20)
making wine glassware. What is your wine story?

David (03:24)
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know if I was managing them or if they were managing me, yeah, I was in New York Center of Finance and also funny enough, the Center of Wine and I was drinking a lot of wine in spite of because of the finance, I don't know, but and then I was using a lot of nice glassware as well and I think that was.

what drove me to it. I just thought the market for the wine glasses wasn't complete. It wasn't, you know, we have a lot of representatives in New York and the US in general for nice glassware, but no one was really doing it in a direct to the consumer kind of a way, in a way where you would be able to decrease the price, but also improve the service that you were offering to the customer.

⁓ And that innovation was already made in a lot of other sectors. So that's kind of what drove the idea.

Laurie Forster (04:22)
Great. And of course, you know, some of the names, Riedel, Zalto, Spiglau are probably, you know, for wine lovers, household names. What was it that you really set out to do with Glasvin that was different from what was already on the market? And was there one glass that was like your inspiration? I want to do make it, you know, this level, but at an affordable price.

David (04:46)
Yeah, absolutely. think the thousand pound gorilla in the room for what we do is basically Zalto. And that was definitely like the inspiration for sure to like try to create something at that level. You know, a fraction of the price. think today Zalto has kind of become less relevant and it's more of a it's more of a Riedel kind of game.

and they've come out very, very strong as well. So we definitely play both sides now, but definitely at the time it was more of like a counterpoint to Zalto.

Laurie Forster (05:23)
sort of an aspirational, it's an aspirational glass and I know it's a glass that many people try to find, but they can't. And so how did you come to create your glassware? I Coravined myself a little Chateau Musar in this glass ⁓ for today's interview. But how did you come to create this? What is the differentiating point for glassvin?

David (05:40)
Great.

Laurie Forster (05:48)
Obviously I know price, tell me about the construction of the glass and how you went about finding these amazing craftspeople.

David (05:56)
Well, I'll start by saying I just had a 98 Chateau Musar in, of all places, Nanjing in China. yeah, great choice of a wine. But yeah, like I think, look, like these glasses are not, you know, forever. They're going to break at some point. So it really hurts when you break like an $80 glass. And that's kind of what I, you know, set out to help.

Laurie Forster (06:03)
Amazing.

David (06:25)
alleviate the pain of a little bit. And the first idea wasn't necessarily to like, you know, make my own glass, it was to like, bind something to import or something like that. And other people have done that and done that very successfully and done that really well. But at some point I was in that like entrepreneurial process, you know, I was like, I should just, I should just create a brand around it instead of, you know, jumping onto someone else's brand.

so it was, it was pretty quick that I could, I decided to just like, try to make my own brand. and I decided, I figured out it was, it was doable, which, wasn't, is not obvious, but I, ⁓ that's the, you know, that was maybe like the main thing that I figured out that it was doable to just do it myself and get the price, you know, really, really down, which you wouldn't be able to do if you were

if you were importing someone else's brand.

Laurie Forster (07:17)
Gotcha. And tell me about the construction. They seem so light. But I know that in, you know, doing research on your website, in addition to being light, they're also a bit more durable than some of the thin, glassware we see on the market. And if you folks go to glassvin.com, there's some great pictures of the molds and how these are made. But in general, tell me a little bit about hand blown glassware versus

manufactured glass and how that process is done. And then we can talk about why it's important for wine.

David (07:52)
Yeah. So I think I don't want to oversell the like it's probably like similar durability to other, thin kind of like ultra thin glassware. think it is like ultra thin glassware, is probably going to break more than like your standard kind of glassware that you buy at Ikea or whatever, but it actually is more, like there's a little bit more give in the glass.

like it is meant to like bend a little bit just like based on how it's made versus the really rigid kind of glass. So it's actually not that much less durable than, you know, like a very, very rigid glass. But what that's at, like, for example, the stem is very, very thin. you know, like where, like you're not really realistically going to break. Yeah, exactly. Like that part might be a bit, a little bit less durable.

Laurie Forster (08:29)
Mm-hmm.

David (08:46)
you know, but obviously you don't have to like put any stress on that. So like when you're washing it, for example, you don't need to stress that part of the glass. So it's not realistically going to break there unless if, you know, something stressful happens to it.

Laurie Forster (08:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And the people that are actually blowing this glass, creating this glass, where is this taking place in the world?

David (09:07)
So the majority of our production occurs in China, happens all over China. We also make a little bit in Europe as well, but the majority of what we do is in China.

Laurie Forster (09:09)
Okay.

Okay. And I know when I'm doing wine education, whether it be corporate events or consumer events, when I talk about glassware and I talk about, you know, investing in good hand blown crystal glassware, one of the benefits of that is that when you are swirling your wine in a glass like this versus a clunky manufactured glass, you're actually vaporizing more of the wine, which makes it more accessible to your nose. And 80 % of tasting wine is smelling.

So is that the idea for you or are there any other benefits that you see in having a glass like this versus any old wine glass you could find?

David (09:59)
definitely makes this swirling a much more pleasant thing to do. But generally just like one, obviously like just raising the glass off the table and, you know, putting it to your mouth and putting it to your nose, you know, with like wine is not like beer or something like that. Like you're, just doing that all night long versus other drinks. So, so that's that, that that's like a primary benefit that people, why people enjoy it. But

The idea is just like, it's a lot, it's just less material between, you know, the wine and yourself. And that does improve the experience a lot. Like people who like fine wine are not drinking wine out of glasses that are heavy at this point in time. Like people are choosing some lightweight glass, whether that be us or Zalto or something like that.

Laurie Forster (10:47)
Mm-hmm.

David (10:54)
Um, it's just like, wouldn't buy like, you know, a hundred dollar bottle of wine and then, you know, put that in like a $20 glass. Like you just wouldn't do that. So, um, makes sense. Exactly. Yeah.

Laurie Forster (11:03)
Doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Love that. And I think also the experience of sipping, tasting the wine with a thinner rim is just a better experience. It's less in the way of tasting the wine on your palate. So I think that is also a positive. This is your all purpose glass. Thank you for sending me some of your samples. But I also have a short.

You have a whole variety of different styles of glasses. Tell me, you know, why did you decide to do all of these? This is a whiskey tasting glass. My husband will be happy to use that. So how did you decide how many styles to have out there when you were designing your line?

David (11:44)
Yeah, I think like we started with just one style, you know, because it takes energy and time and capital or whatever to like, you know, add more stuff. So we started with one, the universal, which I think that's what you're drinking out of, I think it's called the universal. And that's still like, you know, that's all in glass, you know, that's like, like the, like not the majority, but like a very, very substantial part of our revenue still.

Laurie Forster (11:59)
Yes, it is.

David (12:10)
And then we just started expanding that into other things that our customers needed, like larger burgundy, Bordeaux kind of bowls. We expanded to champagne. They're not flutes, but kind of champagne glasses. And then from there, we went into cocktail glasses, which is what you showed as well. I mean, that one, for example, I

I was designed with Saga and Overstory, like the people behind Crown Shy. so, you know, that's sometimes what we do is we'll work with other companies who know what they're doing, more than I do, frankly, with the glass and we'll put something else out there that we think fits nicely into our portfolio.

our kind of philosophy would be to try to not like create too many versions of the same glass. You know, like we don't want to give people like, like there's a paradox of choice in the, in the, in the world of wine glasses as well. So, you know, we already, like I used to kind of make fun of some other companies for having like hundreds of glasses on their website. I mean, we are kind of now like we're, we're doing the wrong, like we have 20 or so or

20 to 30 or something SKUs as well now. So I'm like eating my words a little bit, but you we're just trying to keep the SKU count as low as possible to, you know, if people want like a rocks glass, like there's one option really that they go for. They want a martini glass. There's one option they go for. So try to like keep the SKU count down and like give people just like the best of what we think they should get.

Laurie Forster (13:30)
No. ⁓

great. And if you're going to wash your glasses, what is the perfect way to wash one of your glasses to maintain it and be careful not to have any breakage because that's a sad moment.

David (14:05)
Yeah, like there's no better way than just putting it in the dishwasher, bottom rack facing down. If you're a commercial customer, then obviously commercial glass rack in a dishwasher as well. That's the best way to wash your glasses.

Laurie Forster (14:21)
interesting because I would put it on the top rack. So I'm learning something. I like this.

David (14:24)
Yeah, so

yeah, because, well, to be clear, if it fits in the top rack, but most dishwashers, like it wouldn't fit in the top rack. When people talk about the top rack, usually they're putting it like this. And then there's like something that you're attaching the base to. Like it's like a thing that they made, which that is not like, that will break the stem and we will not like replace that.

Laurie Forster (14:45)
Yes.

David (14:52)
stem for you if, you know, if you if, if that's how it breaks. Because clearly that stem is like very thin. if, you know, if that's it breaks because it was touching something. So yeah, definitely bottom rack facing down, nothing's touching the stem at that point. It's just, it's just the bowl that's touching it. The bowl isn't going to break in the dishwasher. It's really the stem that breaks in the dishwasher. And that's how that's how you don't break the glass.

Laurie Forster (14:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think what you're referencing is you have a guarantee on your glassware line that if it breaks in the dishwasher, as long as you're, you know, putting it in the dishwasher correctly, as you've instructed us that you will replace that stem, is that that's amazing customer service, I have to say. But I know a lot of your customers are restaurants in addition to just, you know, wine lovers and enthusiasts. And so give us just a couple of highlights of different places that

are using Glasvin in their restaurant scene.

David (15:47)
Absolutely. our strongest market is New York City. We're probably like in, you know, a third of like the kind of the restaurants that have Michelin stars just as one, just one, not that Michelin stars are everything, but that's like one measure of the restaurants.

For example, like we are in like Junsik, three mission star restaurant. They just became three mission stars. We're in Gaper Krüther, two mission stars, Crown Chi, one mission star. And this goes on and on and on. We also have this like, we call it the home line, but it's also used in tons of restaurants. you know, like for them, we just call it like the GV line versus the glasvin line, which is like our slightly more durable, less expensive option.

And that's used in like just, they're also used in mission site restaurants like Coat and Cocodack, things like that. So yeah, just if you're into like fine glassware as a restaurateur in a major city like New York City, Glasvin is definitely something that you're going to be considering when you buy glasses for your restaurant.

Laurie Forster (16:52)
Nice. I love that. at the end of the show, we're going to give out a code. If folks want to go to the website and replace all their wine glasses with the glass of in, ⁓ but it's going to be a 10 % discount. So I'll give that out at the very end of the show. But in 2020 food and wine magazine, awarded you one of the best new wine products. did that feel like validation that you had finally become one of the big players in this marketplace?

David (17:19)
That was crazy when it happened. I sent a sample to the editor there, Ray Isle. I don't know if you know him. I don't know if he's been on the podcast. But yeah, he put it on ⁓ that list and that was absolutely massive. That was probably our first major press thing. there was no, I didn't have a press PR person.

Laurie Forster (17:28)
Yeah, I do know, right?

David (17:44)
Um, at that time, so it was just, it was just me sending samples to, um, press. This was 2020. So I started in, in 19, but like we started selling in 2020. So this was like very, very, very early in the process. And, um, yeah, I don't know if that was like validation or whatever, but it, uh, you know, it definitely felt great. And it, uh,

Laurie Forster (17:57)
Mmm.

Yeah

It doesn't hurt.

David (18:08)
Now,

you know, I feel like now, you know, if you search up like Glasvin you'll find lots of articles that write about us. But yeah, he was definitely like Ray Ray was like very, very early on the, you know, like bandwagon for Glasvin. So we really appreciate that.

Laurie Forster (18:23)
one more thing about glassware then we're going to talk about Somm.ai. But I noticed on each of the boxes, you feature a different artist. And it's called the Artist Series. And the Whiskey has a different artist. This is a photography piece. Some of them are pieces of art. Is that something that you're passionate about? What was the inspiration to link these glasses back to artwork?

David (18:46)
It's just, it's more like that it just looks nice, I think. But yeah, like I was more like inspired by like wine labels. So like some of my favorite wine labels are basically just like, you know, a piece of nice looking art effectively. So like, for example, I'm a big like beer lover, for example, and like Cantillon, a lot of their

Laurie Forster (18:50)
Okay, honest.

David (19:11)
you know, it's just like the word can't you on and like a thing like of art. And then another example is like, Labet, for example, has really nice labels, Labet, like the, juror wine L A B E T. And also just like the word Labet and then like a nice big label. So that's kind of what I was inspired by. And then obviously in my just like daily life, I come across lots of people who do this, this kind of stuff. And

Laurie Forster (19:15)
piece of art.

David (19:37)
⁓ They love having their stuff on it and I love having their stuff on it. So that just came together really, really well. So yeah, we're always looking for new stuff to put into our new products. And sometimes old products. ⁓

Laurie Forster (19:43)
Yes.

Love that. And these are a piece of art. It's a

functional piece of art, of course, but if you think it's handmade, it's a craft. So it is a piece of art. So I think it's a great tie-in. All right. So obviously, you come from the world of numbers and finance, and you also have now created som.ai.

David (20:04)
Absolutely, Thank you.

Laurie Forster (20:15)
then you're helping wineries and other wine companies harness data, make decisions and more. Tell me a little bit about Somm.ai What does it do and how did you get into creating AI when you were focused on glassware?

David (20:32)
Yeah. So the history is actually, so I quit my job to start Somm.ai and then like a few months after that, I created Glasvin, which was in hindsight an excellent thing to have done. Now Glasvin is like a bigger company than the software even. But yeah, the software, basically it scrapes a ton of wine lists. I mean, basically we try to go after as many wine lists as we can.

⁓ in, the U S and globally, and then we take all those, all that data down and then we put it into a portal and we sell that portal to the various, wine brands. They're mostly us, wine brands. Our data is mostly us. So it's a fairly us focused kind of thing. but we also have some international clients. we also have non wine stuff. have like spirits and food. Like when we take that data down, we take down everything, including.

the menu items like the food items, for example. So all that data, we package it into a nice little interface and then we sell that to the brands.

Laurie Forster (21:38)
Great. is there, so I would imagine they can see how represented they are on wine lists across the country as you download all that, but is there any way to tie that back to sales or you're just assuming a certain level of sales based on representation?

David (21:45)
Yep.

⁓ We do have some estimates of sales, but yeah, we don't know the exact sales, nor would the restaurant want us to know exactly how much of each wine they're nor would like the competitor brand want like their competitor brand to know how many, how much sales they're having, but we have some good estimates of that. But, you know, knowing that you're at a restaurant or not at a restaurant,

Laurie Forster (22:10)
Mmm.

David (22:18)
and, most importantly, it's about like which restaurants you're not in that your competitors are in. cause, cause obviously your competitors, have done their homework as well. And like they're in the restaurants that they think are going to generate the most sales. So that's, that's really the value of the product is being able to see if I had, if I had software right now that told me every single restaurant that had Zalto, that uses Zalto, I would pay.

a quite a quite a large sum of money to get that list so I can start calling them and being like, hey, would you like to try some glassvin you know, and that's effectively what we're up

Laurie Forster (22:54)
Right.

I gotcha. And there's a lot of talk. I mean, obviously your product is different, but there's a lot of talk in the industry about the whole idea of AI replacing a Somm and even giving a consumer. What'd you say?

David (23:06)
Yeah, it's a bit of a misnomer.

I said it's a bit of a misnomer. I just, I don't know, I just randomly thought of this name and people now, like some people, like very, very, very few people know what Somm.ai is, but like of those, that group of people, like an even smaller amount of people think that we're like trying to make it AI sommelier, which is not actually not what we're doing. And there's some companies that are trying to do that. And that's...

Laurie Forster (23:15)
It's brilliant.

Yeah.

David (23:34)
not a, unfortunately not a good business, but, you know, we, mean, in a way, like we, when we started, like, it was more for like consumers. Like I was going to just use it myself, for example, to like, find where all like the best wines were. And that's like why I named it like, like an AI song, cause I couldn't just could ask it like, you know, like where, like the, where I could find like DRC here, not, that I'm drinking DRC that much, but like, you know, where I could find.

Laurie Forster (23:59)
Yeah.

David (24:00)
Or noire or Le Bay or Ravineau or whatever, something like that. That was like the initial idea of it, that it just shifted to being more like a B2B thing, is, which interestingly is a good business. And I just kept the name and didn't rename it to something else. So, and now we even do like food stuff. So it's not even like, it's not even necessarily a wine and spirits related anymore. But I just kept the name and if someone wants to buy the name Somm.ai I guess it's a nice name.

Laurie Forster (24:17)
Gotcha.

Right.

David (24:29)
Feel free to offer me a large sum of money and I'm happy to rebrand it to something else.

Laurie Forster (24:36)
And

then you will be drinking DRC if that happens. ⁓ But that brings me to a question I love to ask. And so I have this concept of like the death row wine, which would be like the last wine if you had that, you know, this is the last wine you're ever going to have. What would that be for you? Of course, in a glass, but glass. But what is that wine if you had to just pick one? What would that be?

David (24:38)
Love it.

yeah.

⁓ man, that's so-

Laurie Forster (25:04)
I know it's heartbreaking

because we love so many things, right?

David (25:08)
Really hard. like, like, I think, I think it might be I think it might be like, like Raveneau or Dolby sat or whatever, like, not gonna pick a side on that one. I'm gonna alienate some people. But yeah, I think, because I love red wine, like I drink way more red wine than white wine. ⁓ Just because like, there's just so many like there's

Laurie Forster (25:19)
Nice.

Hehehehe

Okay.

David (25:32)
there's way more options for like good red wine versus good white wine. So the fact that like they're able to make Chardonnay taste that good is incredible. So yeah.

Laurie Forster (25:37)
Mmm.

That's amazing. Awesome.

Mine is an Aldo Conterno 1999 Barolo Gran Bussia has to be the Gran Bussia ⁓

David (25:55)
I was actually

thinking, like, for a second it popped up like something like a Darcy, I don't know if, you know, like the Langhe Nebbiolo there, I guess they make some Barolos too, but like for a second that popped up, so yeah, I agree with your Nebbiolo, I think that's like up there as well.

Laurie Forster (26:11)
Awesome.

Well, this has been amazing. If folks want to check out your glassware, Somm.ai just give people where they should go to connect with you.

David (26:23)
Yeah, mean, like just our website is probably the best way to go. Glasvin is GLAS.VIN. But if you misspell it, I probably bought that domain too. bringing you back to where it is. And then if you're a brand, then, know, som.ai. ⁓

Laurie Forster (26:41)
Perfect.

Well, this has been so illuminating. I now have a new favorite wine glass for my moosar. Thank you very much. And David, I really appreciate your time and thanks for coming on The Sipping Point. Cheers.

David (26:55)
Thank you, I appreciate you having me.

Laurie Forster (26:57)
Thanks.

Laurie Forster (26:57)
These Glassvin all-purpose wine glasses are my new favorite glass. They are so feather light. I can't believe it. And David has generously given us a code sipping S-I-P-P-I-N-G that will get you a 10 % discount off his site, GLAS.V-I-N. Glassvin, check out all of his glassware there and go to som.ai to check out his analytics tool.

as well. All right, check out my website, thewinecoach.com. You can sign up for my newsletter and also get all the information about my events. As always, I am so thankful for you tuning into the show. If you know another wine lover who would love this show, please pass it And until next week, cheers.