word
The Picon glass
Northern Nevada pours a Picon into a six-ounce stemmed glass. One of them you can order this afternoon. The other has a name, a town, and a trail that goes cold in 2015.
Note
Outside northern Nevada the drink lands in a highball or a Collins, which changes the proportions more than people admit — the stem glass holds six ounces, and a Collins holds twice that.
The one every bar actually usescited
A Libbey 8054 Georgian Irish coffee: six ounces, a slightly contoured bowl, a rimmed stem over a wide foot, five and three quarter inches tall. Libbey has made the Georgian since 1952 and it has been San Francisco's Irish coffee glass that whole time. It is a stock restaurant-supply item, and that — not design — is why it became the Picon glass. Availability decided this.
How to get that onecited
Any restaurant supplier, by the case of 36. Priced around $205 a case at the suppliers that publish a figure, which is about $5.70 a glass, and in stock for same-day shipping. Bargreen Ellingson lists it but hides the price behind a trade login; WebstaurantStore, Zoro and Wasserstrom do not. Thirty-six is more Picon glasses than one house needs and considerably fewer than one house regrets.
The custom one, and why nobody can find itharvested
The Louie Picon Glass Company of Sparks, Nevada makes a stemmed glass for the drink. Two staff. Public business directories list it under a Sparks address with the phone (775) 626-0141, read 17 September 2026 — a directory listing, not a confirmation, and we have not called it. No website resolves: louiepicon.com, louiepiconglass.com, piconglass.com and two more were all tried on the same day and none answered.
Where the story actually comes fromcited
Every retelling of the custom glass traces back to one source: a home cook's blog post about dinner at Louis' Basque Corner, written in 2015. Its words were “Check out the Louie Picon Glass Company website for retail locations, additional recipes, stories, and photos.” It did not link that website. The blog's own domain is gone and the post survives only in the Internet Archive. Wikipedia cites it. Everyone else cites Wikipedia. So the answer to why a Reno resident could never track down the glass factory is that the paper trail is one sentence, ten years old, pointing at a website nobody has produced since.
What we could not settleinference
Whether the company still trades. Nevada's business registry would answer it and would not respond to this machine. Anyone in Sparks with a phone can close this in five minutes, and we would like the answer.
Other doors worth knocking oninference
The bars that pour into them: Louis' Basque Corner and J.T. in Gardnerville both serve the drink in a stemmed glass and both answer the phone. Basque clubs sell glassware as fundraisers. Etsy carries a small trade in Picon glasses, mostly secondhand and mostly unetched. None of these is confirmed to sell one; they are the leads we would try next.
Why the glass changes the drinkinference
A six-ounce stem forces the build tight — amer, a teaspoon of grenadine, a short top of soda, a float of brandy, a twist. Poured into a twelve-ounce Collins the same measures need lengthening, and what arrives is a longer, weaker drink wearing the same name. When people say a Picon is different away from Reno, part of what they are tasting is the glassware.
Kin
Picon Punchdrinkwhat is poured into it← the six ounces it is built inThe bitter has a supply problemstorythe bitter has the same problem as the glass← the six ounces this all has to fit into
Louis' Basque Cornerroompours into a stemmed one, and answers its phone
J.T. Basque Bar and Dining Roomroomthe other bar worth asking
Nevadaregionthe state whose bars set the standard- whether the Louie Picon Glass Company still trades, and what a glass costs
- whether it ever had a website, and what was on it
- which rooms in this directory use the Libbey and which use the custom glass
- whether any Basque club or restaurant sells one over the counter
Sources
- Georgian Irish Coffee 8054 — Libbey Foodservice, the maker's own catalogue · read 2026-09-17
- Libbey 8054 Georgian 6 oz Irish Coffee Glass, 36 per case — WebstaurantStore, restaurant supplier · read 2026-09-17
- Libbey Georgian 6 oz Irish Coffee Glass, PK36 — Zoro, supplier · read 2026-09-17
- Libbey 8054 Georgian Irish Coffee stemmed glass, 6 oz — Bargreen Ellingson, restaurant supplier · read 2026-09-17
- Louie Picon Glass Company, Sparks NV — ChamberofCommerce.com, business directory · read 2026-09-17
- Louie Picon Glass Company, Sparks NV — Amfibi, business directory · read 2026-09-17
- Louis' Basque Corner in Reno — Holm Family Cookbook, a home cook's blog, 2015, read in the Internet Archive · read 2026-09-17
- Louie Picon Glass Company, Sparks NV — Manta, business directory · read 2026-09-17
- Picon Punch — Wikipedia, encyclopedia · read 2026-09-16
- The Picon Punch — Western Life Today, magazine · read 2026-09-17
- Louis' Basque Corner — the restaurant, the house's own site · read 2026-09-16
Record provenance: cited · confidence medium · updated 2026-09-17