How To Choose the Proper Cocktail Glass

Use the highball’s taller, skinnier cousin, the 14- to 16-ounce Collins glass, for weaker, juice-based cocktails like Cape Cods and screwdrivers. The reduced surface keeps drinks colder, longer.

Use a sour glass when serving a whiskey sour or some other drink that ends in “sour.” A shorter, slightly wider version of a champagne flute, the sour glass lends elegance to drinks with a foam head and allows the drinker to preserve the cocktail’s coldness by holding it by the stem.

Serve “on-the-rocks” cocktails, which are liquor poured over ice, in an old-fashioned glass, also known as a “rocks glass.”

Use a coupette glass, which has a broad rim for dipping into salt or anchoring a fruit garnish, when you make margaritas and daiquiris.

Use Hurricane glasses – so named because they resemble Hurricane lanterns – to serve their namesake drink and any exotic, tropical concoctions.

Use martini glasses for martinis and any shaken, strained cocktail, like a Cosmopolitan. The conical shape helps prevent ingredients from separating.