Best glasses for an espresso martini

The espresso martini is unusual among shaken drinks because its appearance is load-bearing. Shaking cold coffee hard aerates it into a fine foam that settles as a pale crema on top, and that layer is most of what makes the drink look like itself. A glass that spreads the crema thin, breaks it on the pour, or lets it collapse early has failed at the only visual job it had.

We judged bowl geometry against the drink: whether the curve holds a foam layer flat across the surface, whether capacity leaves headroom above a four-ounce serve, how much open surface the drink has to warm through, and whether the glass can be carried full without a sacrificial sip. Published capacities, dimensions and materials come from the makers.

We did not score glasses on crema retention in a lab, because we have not run that test, and nobody publishes it. What we can say is structural: a rounded bowl supports a foam layer across its whole width, a sloped cone does not, and a smaller liquid surface loses heat more slowly than a larger one. Those are the mechanisms, and they are why bartenders reach for coupes for this drink.

Every pick here is a real, currently sold glass, and every one is a shape we would serve the drink in. The V glasses are included because people want them, with the compromise stated rather than hidden.

A standard espresso martini is roughly two ounces of vodka, an ounce of fresh espresso, a half ounce of coffee liqueur and a little syrup, shaken hard with ice. That lands somewhere around four to four and a half ounces in the glass before you count foam, and the foam adds visible height rather than volume.

So the usable range is about 6 to 9 oz. Below 6 oz - and the 4.75 oz Nick and Nora is below it - the drink reaches the rim and the crema has nowhere to sit, which means you either build smaller or carry it very carefully. Above about 9 oz the opposite problem starts: a four-ounce drink in a 9.8 oz cone is a small pool at the bottom of a large glass, and the wide surface warms it while you look at it.

That is the same capacity argument that runs through the martini category generally, and it is why best martini glasses spends most of its time on volume rather than on shape. For this drink specifically, 9 oz in a coupe and 6.7 oz in a Nick and Nora are the two sizes we would actually buy.

An espresso martini arrives in the glass only lightly chilled compared with a stirred drink, because the espresso goes in warm and the shake is short. That makes the glass temperature matter more here than almost anywhere else: pour a cold, foamed drink into a room-temperature bowl and you lose both the chill and the crema within a couple of minutes.

Freezer for ten minutes, or an ice-and-water fill for two, and tip it out just before you pour. It is the cheapest improvement available to this drink and the one most often skipped. How to chill a cocktail glass covers the methods and the one that is quickest when guests are standing there.

The other half of the foam problem is upstream of the glass. A hard, properly iced shake is what creates the crema in the first place, and a shaker that leaks or that you cannot shake hard is the real culprit when the drink arrives flat. Best cocktail shaker for an espresso martini is the tool side of this page, and how to shake a cocktail is the technique.

Pour slowly and from low, straight into the centre of the bowl. A fast pour from height punches a hole through the crema and it does not heal. Three coffee beans go on last, resting on the foam rather than dropped from a height.

If you are buying glassware for a bar rather than for one drink, the coupe is the better purchase on every count: it serves an espresso martini, a daiquiri, a sidecar, a gimlet and anything else shaken and served up, and it does all of them well. Best coupe glasses is the roundup, coupe glass size guide is the capacity question on its own, and coupe vs martini glass is the head-to-head if you are still deciding between the two silhouettes.

And if the glasses are a gift rather than a purchase for yourself, a set of four coupes plus a shaker is the most useful pairing in the category - it covers the whole drink rather than half of it. Best barware gifts has the rest of that thinking.