Tea glasses

The size decides almost everything. A small glass of 22 to 25 cl is topped up often and therefore keeps the tea hot; that is the classic choice for mint tea and for loose leaf tea you brew several times over. Between 27 and 33 cl sits the standard for a lunchroom, ample for a tea bag with some water above it. If you want a glass that holds a whole bunch of fresh mint, or in which you let loose tea steep with a strainer, you end up at 34 to 40 cl.

Next comes the handle. Without one you cannot comfortably hold a full 30 cl glass, unless it is thick-walled or the top rim stays cooler. That is why La Rochère has mug models with a sturdy handle, while Pasabahce solves it with a flared shape that lets you pick the glass up by the rim. If you work in hospitality, look at stackability as the third point. Duralex Versailles and Gigogne nest inside each other and so save half a shelf in the cupboard, which is immediately noticeable behind a bar.

Pre-rinse the glass with a dash of hot water. That sounds excessive, but in a cold glass the temperature of your water drops so far within half a minute that black tea does not brew properly. Then pour to two centimetres below the rim, so there is room to pick the glass up without squeezing into the tea.

The temperature of the water matters more than the time. Green tea wants about eighty degrees, because boiling water turns it bitter within a minute. Black tea and herbal tea, by contrast, want water just off the boil. Fresh mint tea is made by pushing a generous bunch of mint into the glass, pouring boiling water over it and leaving it alone for three minutes. If you want something stronger, a hot toddy works excellently in a tea glass, and an irish coffee just as well, as long as the glass is thick-walled enough.

Duralex makes its glasses from tempered glass: by cooling the surface quickly, the outer layer is put under compression, so the glass takes far more knocks than ordinary pressed glass. If it does break, it falls apart into blunt granules rather than shards, and that is exactly why these glasses are found in school canteens and hospitals. Thick-walled pressed glass from La Rochère is not tempered but it is heavy, and mass alone is enough.

Everything on this page is dishwasher safe. Put stackable glasses in the rack separately, not nested, because water otherwise stays trapped between them. Over time tea leaves a brown deposit on the bottom. You remove it with soda in hot water and a brush, not with scouring powder, because that leaves the glass dull.

If you drink coffee more often than tea from the same glass, look at the coffee glasses, where the same sizes return in different shapes. If you want your fingers to feel nothing at all, the double-walled glasses are the logical step. The two brands that dominate this page have their own overview: Duralex for tempered stacking glass and La Rochère for the ribbed French work. If you are specifically after glasses that nest to save shelf space, all the stacking glasses are gathered together, including sizes you use for water and soft drinks.