Toss Aside Your Giant Water Bottle and Sip a Silly Beverage From a Teeny Glass

If you’ve recently spent any amount of time on social media or cultural news sites —including this one—you’ve likely been flooded with content about water bottles. Very, very big water bottles like Stanley Cups, Owala, Hydro Flask, and Yeti have oversaturated TikTok with users recommending,  critiquing, and collecting them. In the non-digital world, shoppers are rushing to stores to get limited-edition ginormous water bottles. We’ve recently learned that some may even contain lead…which might explain the craze around them.

However, I am worried that all of this water-bottles-the-size-of-your-head news is drowning out the refreshing delight of an experience I consider to be its spiritual opposite: taking little sips of a beverage from a very small glass. This very specific vessel does not have the mass market appeal of steel jugs and they can’t match your athleisure set or withstand car fires. But what very small glasses lack in courting capitalist fever dream content, they make up for in creating a treasured moment of joy in your day. 

When you take a sip of a beverage from a dainty glass you remove yourself from the hellscape of optimization culture, the one which requires you to keep yourself fully hydrated as you sit in your four-wheel drive SUV in the Target parking lot. Instead, that little glass transports you to an alternative world (Europe???) where you consume liquids with care and consideration. Maybe that small sip will take you to some sunny beach, the waves lapping onto a sandy shore while you engage in a time-expanding activity like reading a novel or painting with watercolors. A small glass requires you to take little hummingbird sips of your drink, letting it sit on the front of your tongue before pausing to swallow.

I own two stout, stemless, and almost paper-thin glasses that I bought years ago from Crate & Barrel. They are delicate and holding them lightly in between my thumb and middle finger almost requires me to flare out my pinky like a woman with a hedonistic secret. Another great option for a teeny, tiny vessel of indulgence is an old single-serving sake glass, similarly supportive of creative and florid handling. Anything under four inches that you’ll have to treat delicately and with intention fits the bill.

What should you drink in a small glass? Truly anything! But the scarcity of space in said small glass weighs the choice heavier. Personally, I enjoy a zippy fruit juice like cherry or a limeade. I imagine an earthy wine or any sort of heavily carbonated drink would be a strong choice as well. The slower you have to drink the beverage the better. Sipping from a small glass is about building out bubbles of time to float around in, to feel simultaneously unoccupied and entranced. There is no achievement to be gained by drinking out of a small glass. It is simply a nice thing to do.

Let taking small sips from a teeny glass be your excuse to not check your phone for a few minutes or your reason for just staring out the window or listening to the birds announce springtime. If my pitch sounds too saccharine, I understand. That’s because it is saccharine; sweet like the impractical and nutritionally insignificant beverage I suggest you consume. Cheers!