If I Could Only Own One Style of Drinking Glass, It Would Be This Bistro-Style Duralex
Michael Sullivan is a writer covering kitchen equipment and tableware. He has broken more than a hundred drinking glasses to find the most durable.
Tumblers are probably the most-used glasses in your cupboard, whether you’re drinking juice or a smoothie in the morning or just downing a cold glass of water on a hot day. I believe that the items I use daily should be beautiful, which is why I’ve been using the Duralex Picardie glasses for years.
They feel more refined than most other drinking glasses. As a result, they’re suitable for entertaining but not so fancy that you feel silly drinking juice from them in your pajamas. The Duralex Picardie tumbler is so versatile that if I could own only one glass, this would be it.
Upgrade pick
We love the look and feel of the classic French-bistro-style Duralex Picardie glass. This tempered glass is slightly heavier than our main pick, and it occasionally sticks together when stacked, but its shape is more refined.
It’s useful, but it’s not merely utilitarian
The Duralex Picardie tumbler has remained one of our favorite all-purpose drinking glasses since 2014. It’s more expensive than the other picks we recommend, but its contoured shape is pleasant to hold, and the relatively thin lip makes it feel more elegant than many other drinking glasses, which tend to be utilitarian and clunky. The Picardie glasses also nest neatly together (though occasionally they get stuck and require a gentle wiggle to release them).
There’s no doubt that the Duralex Picardie’s timeless design is part of the reason it has remained a staple on family tables and at French bistros for decades. According to the Duralex website, Duralex began producing glassware in 1945. The company has changed hands several times over the years, but it continues to make its glasses in France.
We like that the Picardie comes in a range of sizes, from 3 to 17 ounces, though we think the 12.625-ounce glasses are an excellent all-purpose size (guzzlers may prefer the 16-ounce size). I own several sizes of the Picardie, but I’m particularly fond of using the versatile 4.5-ounce glass for juice in the morning or a pre-dinner gin martini in the evening.
Wirecutter editor Alexander Aciman is also a fan of the shorties. “I have a ton of regular Picardie glasses, but I also now have baby, 3-ounce Picardie glasses that are not only adorable and make me feel like a giant but are also great for espresso,” he says.
The Picardie glass comes in several color options, including a set of six 8-ounce glasses in a mix of colors from the MoMA Design Store.
A tumbler that can survive a tumble
Made of tempered glass, the Picardie tumbler is more resistant to extreme temperature changes, so it can hold a variety of cold and hot beverages—it’s dishwasher safe, too. It’s also far more durable than regular soda-lime glass.
For our glassware guide, we picked 13 finalists, both glass and plastic, and ran multiple drop tests, knocking the glasses onto both hardwood and marble floors from a height of 3 feet. We also hit the rim of each glass against the edge of a marble counter to see if it would break.
All of the tempered glasses we tested survived multiple 3-foot drops onto a marble floor. The Picardie tumbler wasn’t the last one standing in our drop tests, but the same glass impressively survived eight 3-foot drops onto a marble floor without breaking. In contrast, all of the soda-lime glasses we tested broke on the first impact.
Because sudden changes in temperature can cause a glass to break, we also performed two temperature tests: We pulled hot glasses from the dishwasher and immediately filled them with ice water, and then we took glasses that had been in the freezer for an hour and filled them with boiling water. Much to our surprise, none of the glasses broke in either test.
Don’t beat it up if you don’t have to
Though the Picardie glasses are tough, we still don’t recommend subjecting them to unnecessary abuse. For instance, don’t take a glass from a cold fridge and fill it with boiling water. Over time, doing this could result in breakage.
The Picardie glasses are dishwasher safe. Just be sure, after removing them from a hot dishwasher, to let them cool completely, before stacking them in a cupboard. Hot glasses are prone to sticking together, and pounding them or pulling them apart under running water can lead to surface scratches and potentially breakage. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you can hand-wash your glasses with hot water, a sponge or bottle brush, and a bit of dish soap.
The original version of this article was edited by Connor Grossman and Alejandra Matos. The current version was edited by Rachelle Bergstein and Marguerite Preston.
