Martini Glasses Are Overrated—Here’s the Drinkware I Use Instead
This cookbook author always reaches for it post-cocktail testing.
Published Apr 24, 2024 2:53 AM
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When I hopped on the phone with Paris-based writer Rebekah Peppler earlier this month, I told her that one shot from her new cookbook, Le Sud, caught my eye. (She’s also penned Apertif and À Table.) It wasn’t the glowing panoramics of the Mediterranean Sea or the beautifully set table of le grande aïoli or even the glorious scenes photographed in La Pitchoune, Julia Child’s once-vacation home. It was a clean, ethereal image of her clad in a Bourrienne shirt and Ina Beissner jewelry, delicately holding a tumbler full of what she calls a martini provençal.
“I’ll absolutely go on the record with my dislike for martini glasses,” Peppler declared. “They’re unwieldy; I spill. I don’t really want to use a glass that I feel very precious with and might break.” While long-legged versions from The White Lotus might have dominated last year, Peppler is staunchly behind the more squat proportions of an in-the-palm glass. That is to say: There’s more than one way to enjoy a martini—and it doesn’t have to be from an upside-down triangle. Below, Peppler tells Domino how she takes hers and we reveal our tumbler picks for your next round.
How do you like your martini?
I like a 50-50 gin-vermouth martini over ice. I drink them regularly. I’m not precious about it. I would batch it, keep it chilled, and bring it on a picnic or to a friend’s house with a stack of Duralex glasses.
If not in a martini glass, then what?
There’s so many other options that I find are just better in my hand. You could use a Nick and Nora. You could use the Mamo glasses styled in Le Sud; I love their stuff. With a gorgeous silver toothpick, you can really make it feel very fancy without actually adding much. And sure, If I’m going to go to a fancy cocktail bar, I want it to be done up in a coupe.
But at home, a tumbler is what I reach for. It adds a bit of weight and makes it more accessible. And if I do spill, I’m just losing a little liquid and not breaking the glass. If you don’t need to see the color of your martini, I love a ceramic glass. We use our coffee cups at night often. We have a lot of friends who are ceramists, so we have a lot of their pieces, and I like to use them outside of just coffee.
But won’t a martini get warm served that way?
Try the martini provençal; it’s a lower ABV martini with equal parts gin and vermouth, and then I add sherry to it. It’s a strong drink, but I don’t find it to be a drink that I want to sit for too long. I want it to be ice cold. So I don’t really care if my hands are touching the glass because I think it should be drunk pretty quickly. I think: Drink faster and serve less.
I guess martini glasses are hard to store, too, huh?
Exactly. It’s really hard with martini glasses. They take up so much space on a shelf, and I don’t find them necessarily pleasing to look at, anyway.
10 Martini-Worthy Tumblers
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.