So Alan – what dishwasher do you have? It sounds like a winner.
LOL, it’s a 25 year old middle of the road Kenmore. I’d love to have a Miele (we replaced our 25 year old GE with Miele, and love it).
We’ve been very, very happy with the Monogram we got last year. Very great all around.
A couple of 800-series Bosch are on half price sale at Lowes now, $550 and $625 for 42db vs 39db with fancier rack option. I had the idea that Miele was quite a bit more. Bosch doesn’t get a lot of love here but I love my several year old 800, perfectly washes 6 Zalto Bordeaux glasses at a time. The only time I’ve broken a glass in it was when I forgot to lower the rack.
I’d like that answer as well. I moved into a new home this past weekend, and the racking in the Miele doesn’t seem stem friendly at all. The KitchenAid in our last home worked great for stems, never damaging one in 13 years. We’ve already broken one in the Miele.
Cheers,
Warren
We ended up purchasing two of the high end Miele dishwashers. We like them so much we are swapping out the two in our mountain home as well. They do a much better job cleaning than our older models, and leave glasses spotless if you have the settings correct. I’m really happy with them. No more hand washing!
Which model(s) Jim?
I am not at home so I can’t take pictures, but in our Miele, we mostly do glasses on the bottom rack. It has little “arms” that fold down from the sides and the stems fit between them, with the bowl resting on the “hump” in the bottom. The one exception is when I use the Gabriel Glasses, I like do to them on the top shelf, in which case I slide the silverware rack over to make room above. Like I said, we have never broken a glass this way, but obviously your mileage may vary depending on specific dishwasher and stems…
For Zalto glasses we strongly recommend putting them in a dishwasher rather than hand washing. Hand washing, even when you’re being really careful, easily puts stress on the glass either by just the way you are holding it, or by creating torque, or any number of other no no’s. Further- if the glass should break, you could easily get quite injured. That’s no good.
As far as brands for use in your home, we’ve found Miele to be superior. The Futura Dimension has multiple fold down racks, so you can run the washer with both the bottom and upper racks filled with stems.
One of the most important things to do when shopping for a new dishwasher, though, is to take your glass with you to see if it fits. We found that the various KitchenAid models we checked out didn’t work well (or at all, in some cases) for a Zalto glass. Same for most we tried, actually.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
I’m also in the Broken a Lot More Handwashing than Dishwasher camp. Our fairly low end 42 db Bosch does fine. I don’t regularly adjust height, in middle setting i can usually get in 10 or so in top rack (GG, GGG , various Zaltos, flutes) . After a dinner party if we need a second load and did lots of stems I’ll put a few the regular GGs and the Speigelaus in back of bottom rack as well- so far no breakage. I do have this tinkertoy type assemblage one can use to get more stems on bottom rack, but it takes more effort, and I only do if I have a lot of flute/Champagne glasses
Future Diamond. And we prefer Zalto glasses. Like Emily says, I have broken many hand washing. Not one in my dish washer.
We currently have a higher end Miele with the Knock To Open feature, fan and self opening door. It does quite well with stemware. I’ve always been a little leery about using it for that for some reason, but they always come out clean and dry. Riddle Sommeliers only fit in the bottom rack due to their tall stems, though.
In our basement bar (under construction), we opted for a Bosch Benchmark. We had a Bosch before the Miele in the kitchen and it was good too. Maybe not as good drying, but even more silent than the Miele.
Edit to add: The new Bosch we have coming is one of the new models with the poorly advertised Zeolite drying. This has been available in Europe for a while now, but not in the US. If the implementation matches the science, this should set a new bar for drying in a unit without a heater element. We’ll see in another month or so…