Does the Glass Really Matter? A Guide to Cocktail Glassware

Walk into most well stocked bars and you will find at least five distinct cocktail glasses in regular use, sometimes more. It is easy to assume this is simply tradition dressed up as necessity, glassware as theatre rather than substance. Some of it is. Not all of it.

Image Credit: Richard Brendon

The coupe, wide and shallow, is often the first glass people picture when they think of a cocktail glass at all, largely thanks to Champagne coupes and old Hollywood. For a cocktail served up, without ice, it does something genuinely useful. The wide surface area releases aromatics quickly, which suits a short, spirit forward drink meant to be finished in a handful of sips before it warms too much. What it sacrifices is retention. A coupe left sitting loses its chill and its aromatics faster than almost any other shape, which is part of why it suits a drink meant to be drunk promptly rather than lingered over.

The Nick and Nora, taller and narrower, with a gentler taper, has become the default choice for many contemporary bars, and for good reason. It holds temperature a little longer than a coupe, thanks to the reduced surface area, while still delivering a cocktail up rather than over ice. It is, in practical terms, closer to a compromise glass, doing most of what a coupe does with slightly more patience built in.

The classic V shaped martini glass, oddly, has fallen furthest out of favour among people who actually make cocktails for a living, despite remaining the most instantly recognisable shape in the category. The wide, flat opening looks striking, but it makes the drink prone to spilling with any movement and warms faster than either the coupe or the Nick and Nora, simply because so much surface area is exposed to room temperature air. It has largely become a shape chosen for how a drink looks rather than how it behaves once poured.

Rocks glasses, short and heavy bottomed, exist for an entirely different purpose. Anything served over ice, spirit forward and meant to be sipped slowly, needs the weight and stability a rocks glass provides, along with enough room for a large ice cube to melt gradually rather than diluting the drink too quickly. The double old fashioned, a slightly taller variant, does the same job with a bit more capacity, useful for drinks built with more mixer or a larger format of ice.

Highball and Collins glasses, tall and narrow, are built for volume and carbonation. Anything with soda, tonic or Champagne topping it needs the height to preserve effervescence and the narrower opening to slow the loss of it. Serve a Collins style drink in a wide, shallow glass and you lose the fizz within minutes.

So does it actually matter, in practical terms, whether you own all five. For anyone building a considered but not excessive home bar, three genuinely covers most situations. A coupe or Nick and Nora for anything served up, a rocks glass for anything spirit forward over ice, and a highball for anything topped and carbonated. The V shaped martini glass, elegant as it looks, earns its place mainly on appearance rather than function, and can reasonably be left out of a smaller, more considered collection.

This is, in the end, the same argument this project keeps returning to in different forms. Not five glasses because five glasses exist. Three, chosen properly, because each one genuinely changes what happens in the drink once it is poured.