Glassware to Stock Your Home Bar: Versatile Kitchenware for Your Favorite Drinks

Whether your home bar is a cupboard drawer or twelve-seat behemoth, proper glassware is paramount to drinking an alcoholic beverage the way it's meant to be enjoyed. And while bar glassware can be used for nonalcoholic beverages, the same doesn't always hold true for nonalcoholic glassware when it's used to hold alcoholic beverages. Stocking your home bar can be as frugal or expensive as your budget allows. Stores like IKEA have inexpensive sets that do the trick, or you can splurge on Riedel glassware.

The following is a broad list of glassware by alcoholic beverage. Each category has three subdivisions: Good, Better and Best. If you're looking for the basics to get started, the Good category is for you. If you're looking for a respectable selection of glassware, but nothing too extravagant or space-consuming, Better is appropriate for you. Pick Best if it's especially important for you to have the finest, best array of glassware around.

Beer
It's easy to get carried away with beer glasses. Most breweries worldwide release a uniquely shaped branded glass for each beer they release; in Belgium alone these number in the thousands. Serving beer in the proper glassware does enhance its aroma and help develop its flavor. However, you don't need to stock hundreds of glasses just for beer. These glasses do double duty as water, soda or juice tumblers.

Good: A basic pint glass.
Better: A tall pilsner glass, a tulip-shaped glass, and a chalice.
Best: Pilsner glasses, tulip-shaped glasses and chalices-by brand.

Wine
There are dozens of schools of thought here. Stem or no stem, big or small-the supply and type of wine glasses is unending.

Good: A thinner white wine glass and a rounder, fuller red wine glass.
Better: White and red wine glasses, plus a few expensive goblets to swirl and sip expensive wine.
Best: An assortment of glasses by grape.

Cocktails
Shake it, stir it, mix it-most of your specialty glassware falls in the Cocktails category. Martini glasses are the essential in this category; use them for martinis and specialty cocktails like a Cosmopolitan or a Lemon Drop. Tall drinks, like a Tom Collins or a gin and tonic, typically go into a highball. A single rocks glass is for a single liquor or liqueur poured neat (no ice and not chilled) or over ice. A double rocks glass can serve the same purpose as both a single rocks glass and a highball.

Good: Martini glass and a rocks glass. You can put tall drinks in a pint glass. And margaritas can be strained into a martini glass or poured over ice in a pint glass.
Better: Martini glass, double rocks glass, highball, margarita glass.
Best: Martini glass, rocks glass, double rocks glass, margarita glass, highball.

Everything else
This category includes champagne flutes, snifters for liqueur, bourbon, whiskey and scotch; and glasses for port, sherry, and shots.

Good: You can use a rocks glass in place of a snifter and a white wine glass in place of a champagne flute or port glass. A shot glass doubles as an easy way to measure liquor for cocktails.
Better: A set of champagne flutes, a few snifters and a couple port glasses on hand-just in case.
Best: Pillage the Riedel catalog completely. From Ajaccio to Zwetschkenwasser, it's yours for the taking. Bookmark and memorize the Wine Glass Guide website.

You can find many of the glassware you need in the Good or Better category at IKEA or Target, but your best bet is to find a local restaurant supply store, which will carry higher-quality (read: more shatterproof) glassware than the bargain-basement stuff. For the Best category, start with the Wine Glass Guide. Riedel is generally regarded as the gold standard in mass-produced, hand-blown glassware. Bed Bath and Beyond and many other big-name stores also carry fine glassware, including Riedel.