Glass act: the story of the champagne coupe

Christmas creates conundrums. Tree? Norway spruce or Nordmann fir? Turkey or goose? Presents before lunch... or after? And breakfast champagne? To be served in a high and slender flute or a shallow and chic coupe?

The oenophile’s choice? Une flûte à champagne – tall and tapered, either with a conical base or straight-sided with an inward taper – which was first manufactured in the mid 1600s by English glassmaker George Ravenscroft (the Brits, of course, being by then the world’s biggest consumers of champers), its slender form minimising the oxygen-to-wine ratio by reducing the surface area where carbonisation can disperse, enhancing both aroma and taste.

The coupe’s origin story is much naughtier, sexier and sillier – the shallow, mammary jatte-téton (breast bowl) shape said to be modelled on, variously, the petite breasts of historically significant women including the mythical Helen of Troy, Marie-Antoinette (born 1755) or even keen Moët imbiber Madame de Pompadour (born 1721).

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Alas, this is probably fanciful glassware tattle; la coupe more likely derived from the mastos cup, a breast-shaped drinking cup used by the Greeks. The first visual record of champagne consumption, Jean-François de Troy’s 1735 painting Le Déjeuner d’huîtres, depicts a riotous scene of a post-hunt bacchanal, the men drinking champagne from small, bowl-shaped glasses.

A hundred years later, another regal influencer would popularise the coupe amongst Britain’s champagne socialisers. Queen Victoria was said to dislike French bubbly because it made her burp – she even set a trend for the carrying of pocket whisks with which to dissipate the CO2. Victoria insisted on coupes over flutes because their larger surface area meant less fizz.

No wonder the coupe has long been acknowledged as the more glamorous goblet. Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren drank from its libidinous architecture; Karl Lagerfeld, inspired by Marie-Antoinette’s original bol-sein, referenced Claudia Schiffer’s famous form for a Dom Pérignon champagne bowl in 2008; and in 2014, artist Jane McAdam Freud and London restaurant 34 Mayfair created the 34 Kate Moss Coupe, modelled on the British model’s left breast. Another reason for the coup(e) d’état currently underway in the best boîtes? You can’t make a champagne fountain with tall, thin glasses...