My wife and I received all kinds of different gifts from our wedding. Things we asked for, things we didn’t ask for; gifts we LOVED, and, well, gifts we didn’t quite love.

One of our favorite categories of gifts were the “loved but not asked for gifts.” These were delightful surprises. We didn’t receive too many gifts in this category, but one that we did receive was a set of Nick & Nora glasses.

What In The World Are Nick & Nora Glasses?

I admit, this was my first question when my friend told us what he got us—yes, he told us what he got us before I even opened the gift.

Nick & Nora glasses earn their name from a couple—you guessed it—Nick & Nora, from the fictional novel, The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett.

Sleek, delicate, made from beautiful glass, these are the perfect drinking tools for many different cocktails. They’re the best for drinks which are clear like the classic martini, the gin sour, or, as our friends at Amehla Co. have showed us, The Clover Club. It’s pictured below and the recipe can be found here.

More than just housing beauty, both in the drinks and in their natural elegance, the set contains two glasses. It’s as though they were made for newly weds—or any other set of two people, for that matter.

Lastly, they’re light and easy to hold. These might sound like odd descriptors to include about bar glasses at first, but if you’ve sipped cocktails from heavy, inconvenient-to-hold glassware, then you’ll appreciate these Nick & Nora glasses even more.

But Don’t Forget The Mixing Glass

Barware, you’ll see, is sort of like any other niche line of product: once you start poking your nose around, you quickly realize that the landscape for product is enormously large. It’s easy to get lost. This is really the case for anything house or kitchen related.

Like the mattress world: very, very enormous. But I’ll save that for another post.

Any person who’s serious about mixology—i.e. the process of making cocktails from home—will tell you that there are some other essentials to get things moving. The mixing glass is one of these.

The reason mixing glasses are so essential is that enable the full immersion and blending of each ingredient with each other. No more mixing drinks in the glass we’re going to drink from where the first sip feels like all alcohol.

That’s at least how it started for me, I’ll admit.

I’m now trying to “up my mixology game,” as they say. A mixing glass is the perfect way to do that.

You Can’t Have A Mixing Glass Without A Strainer

Well, technically you can, but have fun trying to keep all the ice in the mixing glass from entering your glass or cup when you pour your drink. Having a strainer is absolutely incredible. It’s weird how such a small component of cocktail making can have such a big impact.

With everything else here, there are a lot options. Please don’t stress. I honestly opted for the mixing glass and strainer set.

It was the most affordable, and the quality of the strainer for someone who is just starting out with making cocktails from home will not make or break the process.

Not having a strainer, however, will.

As you can tell, this was supposed to be a blog about Nick & Nora glasses—it’s so easy to get lost in the world of barware. We simply didn’t want you to have these beautiful glasses without some insight on other must-have items.

We’ll have a future post, maybe something like “The Ultimate Guide To Setting Up Your Bar From Home!”

For now, consider picking up your set of Nick & Nora glasses; they’ve quickly become my and my wife’s favorite glassware.