Yes, cocktails are getting tinier and pricier. But why?

After weeks of Instagram envy, you finally get a reservation at that impossibly trendy cocktail bar everyone’s been raving about. 

You scan through the menu and narrow your choices to two: the whiskey fat-washed with brown butter and spritzed with atomized bitters harvested under a full moon, or the vodka infused with hand-foraged wild mushrooms and finished with a mist of yuzu essence extracted during the spring equinox.

The whiskey wins, and you order with the confidence of someone who definitely knows what “fat-washed” means.

The bartender performs what appears to be minor surgery behind the counter. He clearly knows what he’s doing—drinks are being met with loud ooohs and aaahs at tables around you. 

Your cocktail arrives on a tray. A smoke-filled glass dome is lifted with theatrical flair. 

And…your heart sinks. It’s tiny. Like three-sips-and-done tiny.

Thousand bucks for this? You’ve got to be kidding me.

It’s 2025, and we’re not asking for Long Island iced teas anymore. We love how much care and attention is going into these cocktail experiences. All we’re saying is that there is a not-so-small part of us that feels that sometimes size does matter.

Anyway, instead of just ranting, we decided to investigate. And the answers we got inspired us to make a little drinking game out of it.

So here goes—five reasons your cocktails are getting smaller while your bills are getting bigger. Three are real, two are made up. And you get to guess which is which.

Reason #1: Blame it on the sober generation

A bar owner* we spoke to confirmed they had indeed reduced the overall size of their cocktails as well as the alcohol content in each of them—but that this had been done based on guest feedback and not for cutting costs. “People still want to drink, but they don’t want to feel wrecked after two rounds.” The explanation aligns with broader wellness habits. Data shows Gen Z drinks significantly less than previous generations at the same age, with many using apps to monitor consumption or participating in trends like ‘mindful drinking’ and ‘sober curiosity’. Bar owners claim they’re simply responding to this demographic shift.

Reason #2: Square or sphere, make some space for clear ice

Clear ice isn’t just a flex—it’s a standard now. If your favourite bar is not making and stamping their ice cubes themselves, they are probably spending heavily on picture-perfect ice cubes. They reject any cube with the tiniest defect—a bubble, a corner chipped, a hint of a cloud. “Even if it’s going into a Bloody Mary that’ll be topped up with tomato juice,” confirms a restaurateur. Perfect ice in your cocktail shows that the bar takes its craft seriously (but it also takes up sizeable real estate in a glass). And all that filtering, freezing, sorting and stamping comes at a cost, which inevitably gets passed on to the customers.

Reason #3: The bar is now a sci-fi-style flavour lab

Remember when all you needed to make a whiskey sour was two parts bourbon, one part simple syrup and one part lime? Yeah, that does not fly anymore. Making your cocktail taste like a steak (Steakhouse in Pune has a legit cocktail that tastes like this), pizza (try Papa’s Hut at Papa’s) or curd rice (Goa’s Pablos has a fine take with gin) takes a lot of experimentation. One owner we spoke to said they had to build a separate room altogether to ferment, distil, and infuse ingredients in-house. “It’s a full-on laboratory…. You should see the gadgets in there!” Store-bought syrups are a strict no-no. “Every single element that’s going into a cocktail is being created in-house. From scratch. I’ve got syrups that are fermenting for four to five days back there!”

Reason #4: The age of the mixolochef is here 

You must be familiar with the molecular gastronomy era—when chefs became celebrities and everything on our plates became smaller. Something like that is happening behind the bar now. Bar staff are now intellectual equals to the kitchen elite. They’re co-planning tasting menus, collaborating on intricate pairings, and commandeering the sous vide machine when the head chef isn’t looking. Short of smuggling their mother’s sauces out of the kitchen in their hip flasks, these celebrity mixologists are breathing the same rarefied air as their culinary counterparts—and they get to wear cooler outfits.

Reason #5: Lights, camera, shot

Glasses are no longer chosen for how heavy they are or how much liquid they hold—they’re chosen for how they will look on Instagram. One bar owner* told us about a bar that opened last year whose final cocktail shortlist was decided after a photo shoot. “It sounds ridiculous, but they essentially called in a bunch of influencers and asked them to take photographs of the cocktails under real restaurant lighting conditions and table settings—menus, salt shakers, etc. They then shared those photos online, and one of the factors that went into the final selection was the number of likes the photographs got!” Smaller glassware must photograph better.

Not bad—the fact that you’ve made it this far means you’re taking this far more seriously than we expected. So here goes—the big reveal:

1. Blame it on the sober generation: Fake. In fact, it’s the opposite. “Our customers want their drinks to be balanced, but they still want them to be punchy. If they’ve had three or four cocktails, they expect to feel a little high,” Dishant Pritamani, co-founder of The Daily in Mumbai and Tsuki in Pune, told The Nod. “The drinks aren’t smaller—the alcohol content is exactly the same as it has always been!”
2. Square or sphere, make some space for clear ice: Real. These fancy ice cubes cost the bars anything between ₹18 to ₹25 per piece. Considering regular ice cubes wholesale at around ₹10 per kg, you’re paying a nice, fat premium for the perfect cube of ice.
3. The bar is now a sci-fi lab. Real. From sous-vide machines to rotovaps and centrifuges, the way flavours are being infused, extracted, and manipulated today feels straight out of a sci-fi kitchen. “If I want to infuse vodka with basil, I can do it at 40 degrees for 60 minutes—there's precision and control now,” says Arijit Bose, founder of Bengaluru’s Bar Spirit Forward. “Even simple syrups we don’t cook on a flame anymore—there’s no risk of burning anything, and every flavour is dialed in.”
4. The age of the mixolochef is here: Real. Mixologists are really pushing the boundaries when it comes to experimenting with flavours. Take Razvan Zamfirescu, for example, whose cocktail menu at The Dimsum Room in Mumbai features ingredients ranging from Wild Turkey and oolong to sesame oil and Yakult.
5. Lights, camera, shot: Fake. A lot of care does go into picking glasses, but the decision is based on much more than just looks. Rim thickness, circumference, weight, and volume are all factors that come into play, to the extent where vendor exclusivity is becoming a key factor in the sourcing process. “If the bar down the road is using a particular glass, there’s no way in hell my team will be okay with the same one,” adds Pritamani.

There’s also some good news. All these trends are cyclical, so you never know—a super-sized cocktail revolution might be just around the corner. Until then, nurse those three precious sips appreciating that they contain perfectly clear ice and ingredients that went through weeks of prep.

Or just order a beer.