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Coupe Glass

(Coupette, Champagne Coupe, Champagne Saucer)

What is a Coupe Glass?

The coupe glass is perhaps the most iconic glassware style of the craft cocktail movement. Supposedly invented in England in 1663, it was originally designed to serve champagne, but over the course of the last century or so the coupe glass has been adopted by bartenders looking for an alternative to the spill-prone Martini glass.

Coupe glasses are stemmed, and typically defined by their broad, shallow saucer. They’re exclusively used for serving “up” drinks, meaning cocktails that are shaken or stirred until chilled and served without ice (as opposed to “on the rocks”). Similar to a wine glass, holding by the stem prevents your hand from warming it up too quickly.

Though the coupe originated as a champagne glass, it isn’t actually all that great for serving bubbly drinks. Unlike the champagne flute, its wide mouth allows carbonation to bubble up and out relatively easily. This usually isn’t an issue in the amount of time it takes to drink a glass of sparkling wine, but if left out for a while, champagne in a coupe glass will go flat faster than that in a flute.

In recent years, the craft cocktail movement has latched onto the coupe as one of its signature glasses. The Martini glass reigned for shaken and stirred cocktails throughout the 20th century (the latter half of which is pretty maligned among bartenders), but if you’ve ever dealt with one in the wild, you’ll know that the straight walls of the saucer make it pretty easy to spill. Coupe glasses offer a little more protection for the clumsiest among us, and look suave to boot.

Best Cocktail Coupe Glasses

In our opinion, the preferred cocktail coupe glasses are 5.5oz, give or take. For most cocktail recipes, these are the perfect size—and anything larger is simply too much glassware. If you’re looking to buy some coupe glasses for use in your home bar, we recommend the following from Amazon:

Drinks served in the Coupe Glass