Bormioli Rocco Bodega

The 22 cl is the small all-rounder: water with a meal, a cortado, a dessert or an appetiser. The 35 cl gives you the size for a glass of beer, a generous soft drink or an iced coffee with plenty of ice. The 50 cl is the big one: half a litre of beer, lemonade for the whole afternoon or a glass of water you do not have to refill every quarter of an hour. Because the shape stays the same across all sizes, they nest partly into one another and take up little room in the cupboard. For a household, 22 and 35 cl are usually the most useful combination.

The Bodega is deliberately a glass without a fixed purpose. Pour beer into it and hold the glass upright for the last few centimetres for a neat head; use it for hot coffee, because toughened glass copes with temperature changes; or fill it with ice for a mixed drink. The 35 cl is a fine size for a gin and tonic with plenty of ice, and a mojito is easier to muddle in the wide opening than in a narrow longdrink glass. For water and soft drinks at the table, the smallest size is plenty.

Bodegas are made of toughened glass, which means they take knocks and temperature differences better than ordinary glass. They are dishwasher safe on a glassware programme. Do take care when stacking: do not force them into one another, because two stuck glasses only come apart by treating the top one with cold water and the bottom one with warm. Better still, stand them side by side if you have the cupboard space.

More sizes and models from the same maker can be found at Bormioli Rocco. If you want to see comparable low models, have a look at the tumbler glasses or the water glasses; for the larger sizes there is the beer glasses category. If you mainly use the glass for coffee or iced coffee, the coffee glasses follow on from it, with sizes made specifically for espresso, cappuccino and latte.