Could a wine glass shaped roughly like a closed tulip blossom revolutionize the savoring of fine vintages by taming the alcohol in the wine?

That’s the hope of French luxury crystal glassmaker Baccarat, which recently began sales of its new line of glasses in Hong Kong, where wine imports have remained strong on the back of strong demand from mainland Chinese buyers even amid global economic uncertainty.

“People tend to confuse good wine with alcohol in wine, which is not what we want,” said Bruno Quenioux, technical adviser of the Chateau Baccarat collection of professional wine glasses, which went on sale in France earlier this year.

“What is complicated with wine is to get the balance between the fire and water. Get too much fire in the wine and you lose the message of the water… But if you put too much water in the fire, then the fire is dead.”