Going thirsty

I have my little ways. When the sun's shining and I'm sitting outside a bar I like to drink cold beer. I tend to ask for tercios, the beer bottles which contain a third of a litre, hence the word tercio, a third. I started with bottles because they hold a definite amount, unlike glasses which can vary quite a bit from bar to bar. Especially when driving is on the cards I like to know how much I am drinking. Nowadays there is also much more variety in beer styles in bottles than on draught. I don't care for those smaller bottles, the botellín or quinto. Logically, with quinto meaning a fifth, they hold a fifth of a litre. Neither fish nor fowl.

The most usual way to ask for a draught beer is to ask for a caña. One of the reasons for drinking cañas, rather than, say, buying and sharing a litre bottle, is that beer warms up quickly in the Mediterranean sun and most Spaniards like their beer cold, cold, cold. Caña is an imprecise and yet detailed way to describe a specific glass; something of the same order as drinking champagne from flutes or sherry from schooners. The first definition of caña in a Spanish dictionary is rod or cane and the occasional, waggish, barman (it's always men) will play around with the potential double meaning. Caña is definitely the most common way to ask for a glass of beer in Spain though -ponme una caña, por favor. The size of a caña is a bit imprecise but it's in the 200 to 300 ml category. Around here the bigger, half litre, nearly a pint, glasses are usually tanques, but they might be jarras and, if you were in Marid it would be a doble.

Anyway back to my sun dappled but shady table. I've asked for the bottled beer and they ask me if I want a glass - un vaso. Lots of people don't because, if you've paid the higher price for a bottle of beer or if you've gone for some fancy craft beer, you probably want to show how discerning you are. So no to the vaso.

But for some reason wine doesn't come in vasos. It could, and in lots of older films it does, but nowadays you would generally ask for a copa, a stemmed glass, when you're asking for wine. So for the wine drinkers it's -ponme una copa de tinto- or some such. I don't drink a lot of wine. I was going to add that those flat bottomed, very small glasses that are sometimes used for wine are call cullín but Google doesn't agree; Google says the most common name for those is a cortito. In some parts of Spain they are called zurito or penalti. I'm pretty sure it's culín around here though. Probably something to do with a culo, a bottom, as in bum. When I was a lad wine glasses were less voluminous than they are now. They weren't for swirling they were for filling to the top and they were made by the French firm that made the school water glasses, Duralex. A Spanish bloke told me they were called chatos and that chato is used to describe someone with a snub nose too.

What made me think of all this was the word chupito. If my summer drink is a nice cold beer then my winter drink is a coffee paired with a shot glass sized brandy, un chupito. We were out with friends the other day and I said I'd have a coffee and a chupito. Then it dawned that I wasn't the designated driver so I left the table and went to the bar to change my order to a café y copa. I got my brandy in one of those balloon shaped brandy glasses. Later my friend, generously, thought he'd order me another brandy - he'd heard my chupito order but not the change to a copa so he asked for a chupito. The brandy, as it should, came in a John Wayne at the bar drinking redeye sized glass.