What Is a Gluggle Jug, and Why Does It Gurgle?

By Emily Patrikakos, Brand Executive at The Gourmet Pantry.

A gluggle jug is a fish shaped ceramic jug that gurgles as it pours. The noise is not a gimmick bolted on to the design, it is the shape of the fish doing its job, and it stops when the jug runs low. The same object answers to gurgle jug, glug jug and fish jug, which is the main reason it is hard to look up.

Wade makes the original in English earthenware and sells it as the Fish Jug. Ours hold 1.2 litres and come in ten colourways, all at $119.95.

Why a gluggle jug gurgles

The noise is the shape doing its job. The body is deep, the neck is narrow and the spout is the fish's open mouth. As liquid leaves, air has to climb back in past it, and it cannot do that smoothly, so it arrives in gulps. Each gulp is a glug. A wide jug never makes the sound. This one makes it every time, provided the jug is at least three quarters full. Pour out the last third and it goes quiet.

That is also the honest test of whether you want one. If a jug that talks at the table sounds like a good evening, buy it. If it sounds like a novelty headed for the back of a cupboard, no colourway will fix that. The Wade Pottery range is one of the few things we sell where the appeal is a sound. They are made in English earthenware to Wade's original fish shape, and they are built to be used rather than looked at: 1.2 litres is a full bottle of wine with room to spare.

Which colour to choose

Ten colourways, one price, so this is purely a question of what you want to look at. Choose for the shelf it will live on rather than the table it will be used on: it spends far more time sitting still than pouring.

The blues are the ones people picture. Sea blue is the classic, a mid blue that reads as ceramic rather than glass. Cobalt is the same jug turned up: deep, glossy and impossible to ignore on a white tablecloth.

The quiet half of the range is the greens and greys, and it is the easier half to buy for someone else. Eau de nil is a pale green with grey in it that sits well with timber, linen and old silver. Sage, forest green, French grey and agave, which is a teal, do the same job in different keys.

White is the safe answer and not a dull one. It disappears into any table setting, which matters if the person you are buying for has already chosen their crockery. Red is the opposite, and the one that earns its keep on a Christmas table. Yellow is the tenth, and the pick for a kitchen that already has colour in it.

Living with one

Capacity decides how often it gets used. 1.2 litres is water for a table of six, or a bottle of wine decanted with space left over. Anything that pours is fair game, and out of season it works as a vase for short stemmed flowers.

Wash it by hand. Glazed earthenware this shape is deep and narrow, and no dishwasher rack was designed around a fish. Warm water, a soft brush for the neck, then dry it upside down.

As a gift it has an unusual advantage: nobody asks for one, and almost nobody already owns one. Because every colourway is the same $119.95, buying two for two people creates no accidental ranking of who got the better jug. One jug clears our $100 threshold on its own, so shipping anywhere in Australia is free, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday leave our Corio warehouse the same day.

Pick the colour for the room, not the meal. All ten sit together on the Wade Pottery range page, alongside the rest of our homewares and the tableware that goes around them. If you are buying for someone who likes a properly made object in the kitchen, the Dreamfarm tools come from the same instinct.