All About Champagne Glasses

Champagne is the most luxurious of drinks. Lore has it that one of its early champions declared that drinking champagne tasted like stars. Whether its real champagne from France or an affordable sparkling white from California, champagne is the drink of celebrations. A drink so decadent deserves proper stemware (though we'd drink it out of paper cup, if that were the only option available).

The two most common types of champagne glasses are tall flutes and shorter, bowl-like coupes. The taller flute style is preferable to the coupe, as it is better at keeping the wine cold and preserving the fizziness. The narrow vessel encourages the ascent of the bubbles to the surface, but the relatively small exposed surface area of the wine prevents excessive loss of carbonation. Flutes can take a tulip-like, triangular or even a flat-bottomed cylindrical shape.

The coupe shape glass is less common. While fashionable in the 1930s, the coupe has fallen out of vogue because its broad exposed surface area means the wine's effervescence quickly diminishes. Popular myth holds that the coupe glass was designed to resemble the breast of a famed beauty (at various times Marie Antoinette, Helen of Troy and Josephine Bonnaparte's bosoms have all been said to be the muse for this style of glass.) However, this legend is widely assumed to be false.

In the event that you plan to build a champagne tower, you'll need to opt for the coupe. As the Joy Of Cooking states, "For those events in life which call for a celebration with gala, nothing equals a champagne fountain." Martha Stewart has directions for building a tower on her site.

One recent trend in champagne stemware that we'd recommend skipping is stemless glasses. While stemless wineglasses are the stemware du jour, they don't make a lot of sense: One is meant to hold a wine glass by its stem so that the wine does not warm in the hand. With a stemless champagne glass, your bubbly would quickly get quite warm.

Whatever the shape of the glass, raise yours and toast to that special occasion. As Mark Twain is said to have once proclaimed, "Too much of anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right."

Want more special occasion ideas? Recycle your Christmas décor for New Year's Eve or another festive event or check out these party goods from Urban Outfitters.