The Izaak Reich Story

In the early nineteenth century, in the Czech village of Staré Hutě, the glass furnaces had gone cold. The original works, likely founded in the 1600s, had sat abandoned for decades. The craftsmen of the region, once sustained by glass, were left without work. In 1814, a group of local glass masters approached a man named Izaak Reich, asking him to lease the old site from the local duke and bring the furnaces back to life.

Reich was not a glassblower. He was something else entirely. An entrepreneur. A builder. A man capable of gathering talent and giving it direction. And he said yes.
What followed was not just the reopening of a workshop, but the beginning of one of the great glassmaking families in Central Europe. Reich brought together skilled artisans and built a company that grew rapidly through the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

After his death in 1837, his sons expanded the business even further, scaling its reach and ambition. By the mid-nineteenth century, the operation had grown so significantly that it relocated to Brno. By 1901, the Reich enterprise spanned thirteen locations, employed thousands, and produced an extraordinary range of glass, from fine tableware to technical and architectural pieces. Their work reached far beyond the table. Reich glass illuminated some of the defining achievements of the modern age, including the lightbulbs of the Titanic and the lamps of the Paris Metro. And yet, like many great European stories of that era, it did not survive the twentieth century. War, industrialization, and the destruction of Jewish communities during the Holocaust brought the Reich dynasty to an abrupt and tragic end. The company was lost. The furnaces went silent. For nearly eighty years, glassmaking disappeared from Staré Hutě. In 1991, a farmer and winemaker purchased the property, then in complete disrepair. His son, Adam Havlíček, grew up there, surrounded by fragments of its past. As a child, he would find ‘gems’ in the creek that ran through the land, small pieces of glass that told him the story of a forgotten craft. The history stayed with him.

In 2014, Adam transformed the property into Zikmundov, a quiet, design-driven retreat. A restored farm. A restaurant. A place built around hospitality, nature, and experience.  Years later, over a glass of wine, something clicked. A sommelier friend poured a wine into a fine glass, and in that moment, Adam saw clearly what had always been around him. The land. The history. The role of craft in shaping experience. Glass was not just a vessel. It was part of the wine. What began as curiosity became obsession. Adam did not come from glassmaking. Like Izaak Reich before him, he came from outside it. But he understood how to bring people together and he only sought out the best. A master of Czech glass. A leading designer. Winemakers to help guide function. And together, they began again. In 2022, the furnaces of Staré Hutě were lit once more. Not as a museum. Not as a reconstruction. But as a living atelier.

|| "The right glass does not change the wine. It reveals more of it."
​

The Revival

Today, Izaak Reich is a place of making. Each glass is mouth-blown by hand, shaped in fire at over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, using a proprietary blend of local materials. No two are perfectly identical as each carries subtle imperceivable variation, the mark of the person who made it. This is not factory production. And it is not branding in the conventional sense. It is the continuation of an idea. That the right people, brought together with purpose, can create something enduring.
The Linden Series takes its name from the tree planted by Izaak Reich in the courtyard of the original
works. That tree still stands today. Its form lives on in the shape of the glass.
The tree endured. The craft returned. And the fires of Staré Hutě burn again.
 

The introduction of Izaak Reich in the United States is not the expansion of an established brand. It is the beginning of a new conversation as the American wine culture continues to evolve. Sommeliers can no longer be just service professionals, and they must truly become curators of deeper experience. Guests are more engaged, more aware, and more curious about the details that create what they taste. And yet, one of the most important tools at the table has remained misunderstood. Glassware.

For decades, the conversation has been shaped by tradition, by varietal rules, or by simplicity. What has been missing is clarity. What a glass actually does. Why it matters. How it changes what we perceive. Izaak Reich exists to answer that. Not to tell you what to pour. But to show you what the glass will reveal.