Wine Pros Agree: You're Using the Wrong Glass for Champagne

For decades, the Champagne flute has been shorthand for celebration: tall, slender, and sparkling with promise. But for those who work most closely with great Champagne, that iconic silhouette is more of a limitation than a luxury.

“Champagne is wine first,” says Victoria James, partner and executive beverage director at Gracious Hospitality Management, including COTE Korean Steakhouse locations around the world, and a panelist at this year’s Aspen Food & Wine Classic seminar Bubble & Crunch: A Champagne & Fried Chicken Marriage Made in Heaven. “A flute traps the wine. You get carbonation, yes, but you lose so much of the actual personality of the producer: the chalkiness, the brioche, the orchard fruit, the smoke, the salt.”

James prefers a white wine glass — even a Burgundy stem for older vintages — because it lets Champagne “behave the way great wine should. It opens.” In her experience, the difference is especially dramatic with grower Champagne or older bottles. “A flute can make a profound wine taste simple,” she says. “A proper glass lets you understand why someone spent 20 years farming those vines.”

That aromatic suppression is exactly why Maximilian Riedel, CEO of glassmaker Riedel, has spent years trying to move drinkers away from flutes altogether. “A traditional flute highlights only one aspect of Champagne: the yeasty notes from the secondary fermentation,” he says. “Its narrow shape simply doesn’t give the wine enough space to express the full spectrum of aromas that great Champagne offers.”

After years of workshops with houses such as Dom Pérignon and Krug, Riedel’s team created a dedicated Champagne glass designed to “allow complexity, minerality, fruit, and texture to unfold in harmony.” The difference, he says, is nothing short of “an explosion of aromas and taste.”

Why glass shape matters even more with food

This year’s Aspen seminar pairs Champagne with fried chicken — a combination that’s playful yet surprisingly technical. For James, the glass is part of the pairing. “With fried chicken specifically, the pairing works because Champagne has both cut and comfort,” she says. “In a flute, you mostly experience the ‘refreshing’ part. In a wider glass, suddenly you smell the autolysis [the process that occurs when enzymes break down dead yeast cells, adding richness, creaminess, and complex aromas to Champagne], the toasted notes, the depth. It starts behaving more like the perfect sauce than simply a palate cleanser.”

Seung Kyu Kim, a partner at Gracious Hospitality Management, executive chef at COQODAQ, and James’ co‑panelist, approaches the question from the kitchen. “I love Champagne with Korean pancakes, especially beef jeon or seafood jeon,” he says. “The contrast is fantastic — crispy edges, a light and tender interior, layers of savory umami, while the Champagne brings freshness, acidity, and lift.”

For Kim, the right glass helps the wine meet the dish halfway. When aromatics are trapped, the pairing becomes flatter and more one‑note. When the wine has room to breathe, “each enhances the other’s best qualities.”

Texture matters, too — something diners rarely consider in glassware. “In a flute, the mousse can feel aggressive, almost sharp, because everything is compressed into this vertical stream,” James says. “In a wider glass, the bubbles feel creamier and softer. The wine becomes more textural and layered instead of just fizzy.”

With fried food, James adds, texture is the whole conversation: crispy skin, hot fat, crunchy coating. “You want the Champagne to feel luxurious and expansive alongside it, not like sparkling water attacking the side of your mouth.”

Why flutes persist — and why pros want to move on

If flutes mute aroma and flatten texture, why do they remain so ubiquitous? Riedel is blunt: “Flutes remain popular in the gastronomy and hospitality world because they are practical. The narrow shape saves storage space, and the smaller size makes portions appear more generous.” But from a sensory perspective, he says, “the flute offers absolutely no advantage. It restricts the wine, limits aromatic expression, and reduces Champagne to bubbles alone.”

Other sommeliers echo the sentiment. Thatcher Baker‑Briggs, a Burgundy and Champagne specialist based in California, puts it even more starkly: “Champagne flutes and coupes should really just never exist anywhere. You ruin everything about the wine, and you miss the aromatics.” Jonathan Eichholz, an educator with GuildSomm and host of Munchies’ The Wine Show, is equally unconvinced by stemware dogma: “The need for fancy glasses is superstition. The wine will taste the same in dollar‑store glasses or crystal. If you’re in a pinch, I recommend red Solo cups.” Even he concedes that flutes aren’t doing Champagne any favors.

How the pros drink Champagne at home

Despite the industry’s shift, James insists the move away from flutes isn’t about snobbery — it’s about enjoyment. “Great Champagne changes constantly in the glass, and that’s part of the pleasure of it,” she says. At home, she reaches for white wine glasses “almost always.” Drinking Champagne this way, she adds, “removes it from this ‘special-occasion-only’ category. It makes it feel more integrated into dinner, into life. Which is honestly how the best Champagne producers themselves drink it.”

And for anyone still worried that a wider bowl will “kill the bubbles,” James offers reassurance: “If the Champagne is great, that’s not what happens. The bubbles become finer, more integrated, more elegant.”

She compares drinking Champagne from a flute to listening to music through a phone speaker. “You can hear it. But you’re missing the depth, the bass, the atmosphere,” she says. “A proper wine glass lets Champagne become fully dimensional. And once people experience that difference, it’s very hard to go back.”