Copita

The copita ("little cup") is a small, shallow cup of clay or glass used for sipping mezcal, particularly in Oaxaca. Its low, open shape allows the drinker to bring the nose close to the surface of the spirit, the opposite of the ethanol-trapping cylindrical caballito. A copita of mezcal is meant to last fifteen or twenty minutes; the vessel is built for the besos, no tragos sipping ritual, not for the cantina shot.

Clay copitas are typically thrown by hand on a small village kick wheel and fired at low temperature, sometimes unglazed. Many Oaxacan families keep a set of clay copitas that have absorbed years of mezcal into their porous walls and, in the local idiom, are said to taste of the spirits they have held. Glass copitas (often hand-blown in Tonalá or Tlaquepaque, Jalisco) are the cantina default where unglazed clay is impractical or where the bartender wants to show the spirit's color. Either form sits inside the broader Oaxacan vessel taxonomy alongside the jícara, the veladora, and, for aged spirits, the Riedel Mezcal stem. The full taxonomy and service ritual are walked in the culture chapter.