MAXIMILIAN RIEDEL and his father, Georg.

"I’ve told my public relations people they can quit once I’m on the cover of Time," Riedel says, with only a hint of a smile. The 28-year-old CEO is reedy enough to pass for a teenager except that, as head of Riedel Crystal USA, this 11th-generation heir of a 250-year-old Austrian glassmaking dynasty dresses and acts the part of a driven corporate despot. The words "exact" and "precise" often punctuate his conversation.

Like any successful CEO, he stays plugged in. He downloads several dozen emails each morning from Riedel’s headquarters in Austria, where his father, Georg, commands the international company. He then makes the hour drive from his home in Hoboken, N.J., to his office in Edison, all the while talking by cell phone to his assistant. At the office, he emails terse missives to staff; some contain only two words: "See me."

"I have about 200 emails every day, and I need to respond to all of them and to know everything," Riedel admits. "Is this good? For sure it’s not good, but this is how I learned. Everything goes through me."

He often ends his day entertaining retail store clients or visiting vintners at Per Se or Restaurant Daniel, where Riedel loosens up and plays the amiable bon vivant. Friends, such as chefs Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller, stop at his table. Girlfriend Dani Behr, an Austrian ballerina turned fashion designer, usually accompanies him. He might also bring a prototype for one of his newest decanters or wineglasses and fill it with the contents of a rare vintage. Showing off a wine available only to select customers is in his nature, Riedel concedes. "I’m extremely competitive. I can’t turn it off."

Go West
His ambitious side has been a surprise and a great relief to his father. He sent the then-23-year-old to New York in 2001 and was fully prepared to spend much of his own time commuting across the Atlantic if his son needed his help. "I’m amazed by how he’s been able to focus, and he’s become such an industry superstar," Georg now says.

Georg had to expand the company’s overseas presence, prompted by a declining demand for wineglasses in Europe, along with the continent’s declining birthrate. Maximilian thinks he was also wary of the father-son conflicts that are part of the family history. "He said, ‘Before you and I fight, I’ll give you a market and let you take care of it,’" Maximilian recalls. Georg often argued with his own father, Claus Riedel, who died in 2004.