Some glassware is only good for throwing, while others actually enhance the drink experience. To learn which is which please read on.

Even those of us who live in cramped apartments seem to amass enough glassware to outfit a small tavern. After all, it seems morally reprehensible to drink a $20 bottle of wine out of ceramic cups, right? Fortunately, with over 40 unique types of glassware on the market, there’s a type and style out there for everyone. If you’re planning on updating your glassware collection, we’ve pulled together a quick overview of what to look for in good glassware.

Glassware basics

Glassware design is a science that has been refined over thousands of years. The result is a staggering array of styles, each of which have qualities that are tuned for the drink they serve. There are three main categories of glassware, not including specialty glasses like the tubular, pousse café or three-foot, and yard of beer glass.

• Stemware: wine, martini, sherry, cordial and margarita glasses, champagne flutes and coupes and brandy snifters
• Tumblers: Collins, highball, old fashioned
• Beerware: tankards, sleeve glasses, beer steins, pilsner, wheat beer

Stemware

A good example of form following function is the humble wine glass — the stem elevates the bowl above other objects on the table, providing a visual experience. The stem and base are also the points where we grasp the glass, preventing unnecessary warming of the wine from contact and eliminating ugly finger smudges on the bowl. The bowl is shaped to allow for easy swirling of the drink, without the nasty side effect of hitting your guest in the cheek.

White wine glasses have elongated bowls and narrower openings allowing more light to pass through and expose less of the wine’s surface area. This keeps the wine cooler longer and concentrates the aroma. Red wine glasses have wider bowls and openings that provide for greater air circulation. This allows the wine to ‘open up’ and develop more of its flavour.

Champagne flutes showcase the signature ribbons of carbonation, while snifters maximize the aroma of brandy and allow you to get your whole nose in the glass. Remember a great deal of what we taste comes from our sense of smell.

Beerware

As the global village expands our beer horizons, the influx of Belgian beer has brought with it an appreciation for new beerware styles. The Hoegaarden sand pail glass, the Stella Artois large-bowled stem glass and the tall, fluted, pilsner glass have become bar standards in addition to the everyday sleeve (pint) glass. Unless you are a beer aficionado, it’s acceptable to serve any beer from a pilsner glass, it has the cachet of looking cool and has a nice heavy base to keep it stable — even during the most contentious poker games.

True aficionados know the lighter the beer the taller the glass and vice versa. Heavy stouts are suited to sleeve glasses, while wheat beers and pilsners deserve taller vessels. Much like wine, each design serves to change the way your mouth interacts with the drink. Tall glasses create a bigger mouthful as the in-rush is longer, giving your mouth more to taste.

Tumblers

Tumblers are the workhorse of glassware. They’re used for juice, soft drinks, water, scotch, mixed drinks and cocktails — which makes picking the right one tricky.

Traditionally, hard mixed drinks as well as non-alcoholic beverages are served in squat, round, old-fashioned glasses (also called rocks glasses). Citrus cocktails such as mojitos, Lime Rickeys and Caesars are served in a taller, thinner-style Collins glass. It’s generally acceptable to co-op beerware for most Collins applications, just be aware of the quantity of alcohol you’re adding! If you tend to serve a lot of mixed drinks, then some old-fashioneds are probably a necessity.

Clarity of crystal versus glass

Crystal’s popularity comes from it’s brilliance and clarity. The brilliance creates a visual sparkle and the clarity gives a gem-like quality to the hue of a drink, especially red wine. Crystal is also stronger than glass and can be made significantly thinner. This thinness, along with crystal’s cool-to-the-touch quality, creates a much more elegant feel in the hand and against the lips.

While all your glassware need not be crystal, it’s worth investing in crystal stemware and inexpensive options are readily available (under $7 per piece). If you opt for glass stemware be sure to look for ‘cut’ rims instead of ‘rolled’ rims. Rolled rimmed glassware has a much rounder edge to the lip of the rim. This edge changes the way liquid flows out of the vessel and directs it to areas of your mouth that sense bitter qualities. You’ve likely heard that wine served in a crystal glasses tastes better, this is one of the key reasons why.

Tumblers tend to be heavier and are used for beverages that will not display major flavour differences between glass and crystal. Similarly, glass beerware is perfectly acceptable, and crystal beerware is probably a little stuffy for most.

Tips and considerations

If you can’t stand martinis, chances are your martini glasses won’t get much use — so buy glassware for the drinks you like.

If you buy crystal glassware, spend only what you can afford, remember some will get broken!

Test drive your glasses at the store before you buy — maybe your nose is too big to fit in that champagne flute.

The single biggest influence on flavour is a clean, residue-free glass, so wash your glassware individually and hand dry them with a clean lint-free towel.

Steer clear of design fads and go with classic features. If you break one you can likely find a comparable replacement.