I ask because ,while they look pretty,they are:
-easy to tip over (small base, large diameter top)
-hard to drink from: you can only sip-tilting the glass too much will cause the contents to flow around your mouth(or up your nose!).
So why the weird shape?
Sipping martinis is a good thing. They are not designed to be chugged. A proper glass will have a base roughly the same size as the rim of the glass. The current trend towards over-sized glassware is a sign of The Decline of the West.
I’d say the rat pack invented them…or at very least brought them to the mass media. And to some extent Hemmingway had a play in it too. But Martini’s are meant to be delicately sipped, not chugged…*
I didin’t really get that till later in life…I don’t drink anymore 
*Of course neither invented them…but popularized them…maybe a little 
The idea behind stemware is that the stem gives you a place to hold the glass without affecting the temperature of the drink. A proper glass has a proper balance between the top and the bottom so tipping is difficult.
And martinis are designed to be sipped, so the glass has to accommodate that.
Nothing weird at all about the shape, therefore. It’s perfectly designed for its function.
Because when you are wearing Martini Glasses the girls look much more sophisticated than they do through Beer Googles.
Probably not either one. Martinis were fashionable during Prohibition, and Hemingway had very little fame at that point. The Rat Park were active at the end of the 1950s, and therefore at the end of the decade’s infatuation with the martini. They symbolize the end, not the beginning.
Hollywood movies were almost certainly the main popularizer of the martini, especially after Prohibition ended. The Thin Man movies, which started in 1932, are an example of this.
Addtionally, martinis should be served with enough “freeboard” at the top so they’re not that easy to spill. You really don’t want four ounces of drink sloshing around in there, because they’re intended to be served, and drunk cold. A smaller drink means it doesn’t warm up to room temperature before you finish drinking it. And if you really must, you can always have another.
Even during Prohibition there were some prominent examples of martini-drinking in film. Check out One Way Passage, made, I think, in 1931. At the end, the couple who got together during the story go to Tijuana and drink martinis, then break the glasses on the bar. According to the presenter, this led to a fad for doing that, which speakeasy operators, and later legal bar owners, must have absolutely hated. According to Wikipedia, the drink itself was invented in the late 19th or early 20th century; possibly in Los Angeles! Who’d a thunk? Either way, martinis seem to have had some currency prior to Prohibition.
You are right that the martini glass is the worst design ever.
Besides the flaws mentioned, the shape tends to create waves that slop out of the glass.
A tumbler will take a bit of jiggling in stride, but the smallest shift of a martini glass results in a spill. I’m sure some professor of solid geometry could prove this is due to the cone shape, and the report will make headlines world wide.
The primary reason for the shape is that it makes a small drink look large. Most people guess it holds half as much as round glass of the same surface area and depth, but it’s really only one third.
The perfect shape for sipping. Not a bad shape for the bartender making it to deal with either. The only person I feel for is the waitress that must get it to the table.
I’m interested to know more about this. I don’t doubt what you say is true about the martini glass, but stemware in general must have had a different design purpose when it originated (in the middle ages?)
More to the point, why is stemware used for (room temperature) red wine? Doesn’t everyone hold the bowl rather than the stem anyway when drinking wine?
From a design point of view, is it then illogical to drink cold lemonade from a tumbler, or beer from a pint glass?
:dubious:
James Bond perhaps, but not Frank, Sammy or Deano. They were were pretty much confirmed Bourbon drinkers. Sinatra preferred Jack Daniels, and was buried with a flask of it. Dean Martin always had a dark colored cocktail in his hand, but Shirley McLean sipped his drink once only to discover it was apple juice, not whisky. Sammy Davis Jr. preferred bourbon and ginger ale.
The interesting about the shape is that as the glass fills it requires more and more liquid for a given change in depth. That means that you can just eyeball the ingredients and it will almost always appear as if the glass is perfectly filled. A half ounce more or less produces an imperceptible change in the glass.
One reason is that you don’t want to smudge the bowl. Part of the process of drinking good wine is evaluating the color and clarity; normally you would want to do that in a context where you are focusing intently on experiencing the wine, as you would at a wine tasting. Otherwise, you are right, and most people do hold the bowl. There are even stemless wineglasses now; one of their advertising points is that they fit in the dishwasher.
I love me a good martini! I don’t know the whys or how of the glass. All I know is holding a martini glass and sipping a good dry martini makes me feel all grown up, suave, couth and sophisticated. Plus, they’re just damn good!
Just for fun here’s a cool site on the history of the martini. I know it doesn’t answer the glass question, but still it’s a good read.
Just one person weighing in but no, usually not. The size of the opening on some red wine glasses is designed to approximate that from your mouth to your nose, thus allowing you to inhale the aroma as you’re tasting the liquid. I’d not want to bring the glass crest that close to my nose in what for me would be a clumsy, bowl-held fashion, nor could one slowly spin the stem from such an arrangement. Three or four fingers on the far side of them stem with the thumb on the near seems to work well, if one should be inclined to desire such dexterity.
Actually, stemware is a rather more recent invention. The purpose, as noted, to prevent the transfer of heat from hand to glass. A tumbler full of iced lemonade is a different story, as is a pint of cold beer. The lemonade likely has ice in it, and the beer glass is much thicker than a martini glass, giving a greater degree of insulation. As for the drinking…well, red wine doesn’t make much difference. Your hand and its heat won’t have that great an effect on the drink. But a warm martini is an offense unto Og.
Sure, some currency. It was a known drink, but it was one of hundreds. There was nothing special or sophisticated about it.
A check through newspaper archives shows hardly any mention of martinis outside of ads for bars before Prohibition. And during Prohibition, there were few mentions of the drink to be found at all, although this particular archive doesn’t search New York City newspapers, which is a definite bias.
Anyway, drinkers would have known what you meant by a martini but it wasn’t a famous or classy drink until later.
Red wine should be served at cellar temperature, not room temperature (unless your rooms are kept at 60 degrees F or so).
Stemwear?! Shoooot. I just down it straight from the bottle.