Beware the Champagne Flute

An Airing of Grievances

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It’s December again, and the specter of the New Year’s party is beginning to loom.

Some of us, no doubt, will be hosting festivities. We’ll pick out music. We’ll send invitations. We’ll decide that this is the year we serve caviar, on water crackers with a dollop of creme fraiche. Then we’ll see the price of beluga, and we’ll conclude that lumpfish roe is just as delicious.

And, of course, we’ll spring for a case of champagne, because it’s the one time of year that demands it. We’ll run through our checklist a final time—people, food, music, booze—and then we’ll rest on our laurels, assured that the evening will impress and delight.

Until the morning of December 28th, when the dreaded realization will hit: we have nothing in which to serve our champagne. Wine glasses would be strange. Water glasses would be worse. Disposable plastic won’t do; the evening would feel like a corporate mixer. We and thousands of other party-throwers will come to the same bitter conclusion: we need to buy champagne flutes.

So we do. We find the cheapest flutes available. They make a brief appearance on New Year’s Eve, where they perform adequately, and in the sober light of January they get washed and stored in a cupboard above the fridge.

And that’s where they will remain—until mid-April, when we realize we haven’t touched them in four months. Do we keep them? Frankly, we could use the cabinet space for our new food processor. Perhaps it’s best to just get rid of them. We’ll find a better solution for our next New Year’s party.

This, I’m convinced, is the life cycle of the champagne flute. It makes its way in and out of our lives, barely clinging to relevance—but cling it does, because once or twice a year we deem it essential for entertaining. Beyond those few days, what good does it do us? Its proportions are awful. Its uses are limited. It is, on the whole, a disagreeable little vessel. How glorious it would be if we could all just decide to drink champagne out of something else.

I do feel some measure of sympathy for the champagne flute. Its limitations are not its fault. It was designed with one job in mind—to preserve champagne’s bubbles as it sits in the glass—and it performs that job well. The flute’s narrow shape minimizes the amount of champagne exposed to air, which means bubbles can’t escape as quickly. Decarbonation slows, allowing your glass of champagne to remain effervescent while you mingle.

Which is all well and good, I suppose—though I’d like to know who drinks champagne so slowly that it risks going flat in the glass. I assure you it’s nobody in my life.

Regardless, one meager benefit does not outweigh the champagne flute’s many drawbacks. It’s a masterclass in bad design. It’s awkward. It has displeasing proportions. It’s so tall and slim that the slightest tilt causes spillage, which means it can only be filled halfway. As a result, champagne is the one type of wine served at a four-ounce pour, instead of the five-ounce standard upheld for all other wines. And because the flute’s form is so specific, you’ll never use it for anything but champagne—unless you drink a lot of Bellinis, which for your sake I hope you do not.

And God help those of us with larger noses. The nasally endowed will find the flute’s narrow opening impossible to navigate, and will surely descend into malaise—the nail in the coffin for an already lackluster piece of stemware.

Which is why, this year, I implore you not to fall into the champagne flute’s trap. It has been invading our cabinets and harassing our noses for close to three centuries, surviving on naught but momentum, and it’s time we made a stand. As you plan your upcoming New Year’s party, you must reject the flute! Deny it entry into your home! I assure you that you don’t need it!

Instead, allow me to present a more elegant option: the coupe glass.

Ah, the coupe glass. What a marvelous creation. Everything the champagne flute lacks, the coupe glass provides with ease. Its design is graceful, yet relaxed. It feels stable in your hand. It holds six ounces, and thanks to its straight walls, it can be filled just shy of the rim without risk of spillage, ensuring that you receive a full serving of champagne. Its dimensions are proportional, with a saucer diameter that matches the length of the stem. As a result, the coupe imparts a sense of balance in both look and feel—and it provides sufficient clearance for even the most amply nosed. It is, in every way, the perfect vessel for champagne.

But the coupe does not stop there. Anything you pour into it, it carries with grace. It begs you to test its horizons. What would you like to serve? A martini? Of course! A Manhattan? Why not! A Negroni? The coupe will deliver it with an air of relaxed elegance that puts the rest of the stemware world to shame.

Coupes adorn the pages of The Great Gatsby. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman clink coupes in Casablanca. For years, the coupe was the default champagne vessel in the United States—until the 1980s, when the flute rode in on a wave of bad taste and managed to take over. But unlike padded shoulders and acid wash jeans, which lost their footing in our society and returned to the depths of hell, the champagne flute has endured, successfully displacing a superior (and far more tasteful) option. What a shameful, dreadful thing.

But we can turn the tide again! We can restore the natural balance! This New Year’s Eve, allow your guests to bask in the freedom of the coupe. Reject the champagne flute. Send it plummeting back into the obscurity it deserves and allow better tastes to prevail. Long live the coupe!