Sherry glasses

The copita is narrow at the opening and wider in the middle. That taper does two things at once: it gathers the aroma above the surface of the wine and it holds back some of the alcohol vapour, so that sniffing does not fill your nose with sharp ethanol. For fino and manzanilla that is the difference between smelling almond and smelling nothing.

On capacity you end up between 12 and 20 centilitres. A serving of sherry is about six centilitres, so in a 14 cl glass it comes to a little under half and leaves room to swirl. Go towards 25 cl and you effectively have a small wine glass, which is no bad choice at all for an oloroso or an amontillado, because those styles are fuller and take more air. For pedro ximénez you can go smaller instead, since you rarely pour more than four centilitres of it.

Fino and manzanilla are drunk cold, around seven degrees, just like white wine. They are aged under a layer of yeast and lose their freshness within about three days of opening, so a half bottle is often wiser than a full one. Amontillado and oloroso are served cooler than room temperature but not ice cold, somewhere around thirteen degrees, because that is when the nut and wood notes come out. Pedro ximénez may be lightly chilled, over vanilla ice cream or simply neat after the meal.

Do not fill more than a third of the glass and hold the bowl by the stem. In Spain there is almost always something alongside: olives, almonds, ham or fried fish, because the salt picks up the dryness of a fino. The same copita works excellently for dry vermouth, incidentally.

The glasses in this collection run from tempered catering glass to lead-free crystal glass. For a business where dozens of glasses pass through every day, tempered glass is the logical choice: a thicker rim and less breakage in the basket. Lead-free crystal glass, as Riedel and NUDE Glass make it, is thinner and clearer and shows off the pale colour of a fino better.

Wash on a short glassware programme and stand the bowls apart, because the thin stem is where things go wrong. Sweet sherry leaves a sticky rim that bakes on if you let it stand, so rinse with lukewarm water. Polish afterwards with a lint-free cloth and store the glasses upright, so the rim rests on nothing.

Port and sherry share the same shape, so the port glasses are largely the same collection from a different starting point. If you are after a larger, rounder glass for cognac or brandy, look at the cognac glasses, and for sweet liqueurs in small measures at the liqueur glasses. If you would rather have a full wine glass because you pour oloroso more often than fino, you will find those among the wine glasses. For the Spanish table the recipe for sangria is ready for you, and the classic vermouth aperitif is at the americano.