Caskata x High Camp Light Blue Summer Wine Flask

I'm 55, I live in Brooklyn, my kids are grown and gone, and my marriage is behind me. What I have instead, what I've decided to have instead, is a summer.

Not a recovery summer. Not a finding-myself summer. Just a summer where I say yes to things I'd normally think about too long and then talk myself out of.

So far I've said yes to a picnic concert series upstate, a glamping trip with two close friends and a bunch of people I've never met, and a week on Cape Cod with friends who have a cottage near the beach.

I told my friend Diane I was outfitting myself for a new life. That mostly meant hiking boots, which I bought, and a picnic blanket, which took me two weeks to decide on, and beach sandals, which I'm still not sure about.

And then, halfway down an internet rabbit hole on a Sunday afternoon, I found the flask.

I wasn't looking for a flask. I was looking for the perfect picnic blanket, which is the kind of search that takes you to a lot of places you didn't plan to go.

The Summer flask showed up in my feed and I stopped scrolling. It was the pattern that did it. A whole wildflower meadow on the side of a sleek light blue flask, Queen Anne's lace and a dozen other little blooms, the kind of thing you want to look at closely. It felt like the picnic blanket I was still hunting for, except I could actually have it.

So I tapped through. Here's what the page told me, and what actually got me to buy:

• It holds a whole bottle of wine. 750ml. The entire bottle.
• The cups are magnetic. One on top, one on the bottom. No screw-top to fumble with.
• It keeps things cold for 24 hours. Vacuum insulated.
• It's stainless steel inside. So your wine tastes exactly like it did in the bottle.

I thought about the concerts. Sitting on a blanket in the grass at dusk with a glass of something delicious. Not being the person who forgot to bring cups, for once.

I bought it in about four minutes, which is fast for me. I'll tell you the wildflowers did it.

The box came midweek and I left it on the kitchen table until after dinner, because that felt like the right way to do it.

When I opened it, I could tell someone had thought about this part. The flask was wrapped in a sleeve, not stuffed in paper or buried in filler. It honestly felt like giving myself a present, which I haven't done enough of lately.

I lifted it out and the weight surprised me. Not heavy, just solid, the kind that tells you it's well made before you've done a thing with it. The Summer pattern is more detailed in person, every little bloom distinct. The light blue looks even better in your hand than online.

Then I figured out the cups. The top one pulls off with this clean magnetic release, no wrestling with it. The bottom one snaps back on with a click that's so satisfying I did it three more times standing right there at the counter.

Then I had to know: does it really hold a whole bottle of wine? I got a bottle of sauvignon blanc out of the fridge and poured it in. Every drop fit, with a tiny bit of room to spare. So I poured myself a glass, stood in my kitchen on a Wednesday night drinking wine out of a cup the size of my palm, and felt unreasonably pleased with myself.

The cups turned out to be my favorite part. The right size for a real pour, weighted just right. I'd expected them to feel like an afterthought and they don't.

I texted Diane: I found our thing for the concerts.

The first concert was a Saturday in July. Beethoven, the picnic blanket I'd finally committed to, some aged gouda and grapes, and the Summer flask full of a cold white I'd been saving.

I got set up next to a couple I'd never met, which is just how Tanglewood works. You're on a giant lawn with thousands of people and somehow also on a picnic with strangers. The woman next to me, Carol, noticed the flask right away and asked where I got it.

So I told her about the wildflowers and showed her how the cups worked, snapping the top one off and back on. Her husband leaned over to look. Someone behind us asked too. Within about ten minutes I'd given a little product demonstration to four strangers on a lawn in the Berkshires, which was not on my list of expected outcomes for the summer, but there we were.

Carol asked if it really kept the wine cold the whole time. I told her it does, because I'd checked. Then I poured her a small glass. It had been three hours since I filled it and the wine was still cold.

The glamping trip was in the Catskills. Canvas tents, real beds, a communal fire pit, and twelve people, four of whom I'd never met before that Friday.

I packed two flasks.

The Summer, full of sauvignon blanc and chilled the night before. And a second one, the Sardines, full of pinot noir, because my friend Rachel drinks red and I'd seen the Sardines pattern and bought it almost before I'd finished thinking about it. Oversized, perfect, slightly ridiculous sardines, done with the same care as the wildflowers. I loved it on sight.

The first night around the fire I set both flasks on the camp table and, of course, somebody asked what they were. So I went through it again. The magnets, the cold, the full bottle. I poured sauvignon blanc for the white drinkers and pinot for Rachel and a couple of others. Someone asked to look at the Sardines one more closely. Someone else took a photo.

By the second evening, three people had ordered their own from their phones.

I did not expect to become a flask ambassador at a glampground in the Catskills. I was also not complaining.

The Cape was the last trip of the summer and the one I'd been looking forward to most. A week at my friends' cottage near the beach, long dinners on the porch, salt air coming through the screens.

I needed a hostess gift, and the Red Lobster flask was the obvious answer. A lobster on a flask, for a beach cottage on Cape Cod. The engraving was just as good as the one on mine. I wrapped it in tissue, tied it with twine, and brought it to the door.

My friend Susan opened it, held it up, and said, "How do you always know."

I just shrugged. I get asked that a lot. The honest answer is that I pay attention to things that are made well, and I've learned to trust it when something is.

I brought the Summer flask to the beach every day that week. On the last afternoon I sat in a low chair at the edge of the water with a cold glass of rosé and thought, that was a good summer.

It was.

I came back from those three months a little different than I left. Looser. More willing. Less thrown by a room full of people I don't know.

I also came back with strong opinions about flasks.

I'll tell you the wildflowers on the Summer got me first. The magnetic cups are the thing I show everyone. And the Red Lobster is the best hostess gift I've ever given, and I give good gifts.

I'm eyeing the Morning Glory for spring.

 750ml. Vacuum insulated 24 hours. PhantomLock™ magnetic tumblers. No-Drip-Lip™. Electrogloss™ interior. BPA-free. $150.

Available in 11 unique Caskata patterns including Lucy the octopus, the rest of their coastal crew, and some really pretty botanicals. Oh, and add the wool felt case. You'll want it.