Three related wine stories this week:

— A wine collector friend staged a tasting of older Burgundies at a hotel near his home. At the appointed hour he learned that the hotel's air conditioning had gone out, and the room he was to use was nearly 90 degrees. "No problem," he said, "we'll move to the patio." But the hotel told him that no glass was permitted on the patio.

— At a patio diner party, the host provided plastic glasses for the wine, but they all smelled like chlorine and soap.

— A wholesaler was presenting his top-of-the-line Rh?ne wine, Chateau Rayas, to two savvy New York retailers, and, when he was ready to pour the famed wine, he discovered that the proprietor and his assistant buyer used juice cups. The men said they were "sick and tired of washing, and often breaking, good stemware just to sample new wines."

The first two stories happened to me; the third happened to Joseph Pirelli, who decided to do something about it.

"I asked myself, 'What would the proprietor and winemaker of this legendary estate, the late Jacques Reynaud, do if he saw these guys sampling his wine from these lousy cups?!' I decided to solve this problem."

Fine stemware breakage is a problem. Assume you pay $55 for one of those famed Austrian crystal glasses, or, say, $110 for two. And then you pour in a great wine and enjoy it, and then some time later one of them breaks.

The resultant epithet is a lot stronger than "oops. "

That's where Pirelli comes in.

Nearly nine years after his fateful episode with the great Chateau Rayas being poured into plastic juice cups, Pirelli has launched Govino "glasses" that are made from a crystal-clear plastic that doesn't break unless stomped.

The 16-ounce, thumb-notched, stemless wonder has a brilliant design since it is tulip-shaped and thus ideal for swirling, which is mandatory for fine wine.

"My idea was to bring swirling to all wine," said Pirelli. "That's what fine wine is all about. Most of the plastic glasses [on the shelf] are designed to be made by injection molding, which only works if the top of the glass is larger than the bottom."

To make a tulip-shaped glass, Pirelli could not use injection molding, but discovered that extrusion blow molding, a most costly process, worked well. Using a plastic called PETG, Pirelli came up with a version of a tulip-shaped wine "glass" that worked. For the technical-minded among us, the Polymer Plastics Corp. defines PETG as a "glycol-modified polyethylene terephthalate, a co-polyester that is a clear amorphous thermoplastic."

Technical talk aside, the "glass" works like a charm with almost no drawbacks. When filled to the thumb indentation, it holds 6 ounces or so and is large enough to swirl for maximum aromatic impact. It is also fine in the top rack of the dishwasher, virtually unbreakable and remains crystal clear after many uses.

Best of all, they can go to places where glass does not — to the beach, to patios, to state and national parks and into luggage. (To save even more space, pack socks into each glass!)

"To get the clarity we needed, we thought we would have to use crystal styrene — we wanted the viscosity of the wine to run down the sides like it does with glass," said Pirelli, who added that the shape he desired made that impossible with that material.

But the shape was critical.

Pirelli said the "Go Anywhere Wine Glass" will soon be joined by a slightly larger version for Bordeaux-based wines, and there may be a Champagne flute as well. Not to mention a decanter.

The price for now is $2.49 each and glasses may be ordered from govinowine.com.

Dan Berger resides in Sonoma County, Calif. Berger publishes a weekly newsletter on wine and can be reached at danberger@VintageExperiences.com. To find out more about Dan Berger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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