The taste of the cup

A cup is a container and in theory should not affect the taste of the drink inside. However, the "taste" that people usually refer to is not the five basic tastes of sour, sweet, bitter, salty and fresh in the scientific sense, but a combination of the brain's sensory experience of appearance, color, texture, smell and taste. In this comprehensive experience process, the influence of psychological factors cannot be ignored. For example, when drinking, the ancients would say "fine grape wine and luminous cup", which is roughly the combination of wine and luminous cup, which will give people a more wonderful experience. In tea tasting, the role of tea utensils is placed at a higher level. As the saying goes, "the utensil is the father of tea" - the importance of tea utensils is on par with water, which is the "mother of tea".

Exquisite cups are naturally pleasing to the eye and bring pleasant visual and psychological experiences. So does the cup have an impact on the perception of taste?

In France, the standard wine glass requires that the height of the cup body is twice the diameter, and this French standard is consistent with the international standard. But is this shape really the most reasonable? Both French and international standards were formulated mainly based on tradition and custom, and have no scientific basis. There is a university in Germany called Neustadt, and their brewing department is very famous. German wine lovers generally use glasses that are wider than French and international standard glasses, so the university's oenology professors studied the impact of glass shape and size on aroma perception.

The largest components in wine are of course water and alcohol, but it is the "trace components" that determine the flavor and taste of the wine. The types and amounts of various trace components in different wines are different. The aroma you smell when tasting the wine is determined by the volatilized molecules. How much a substance can evaporate is mainly determined by the temperature and its content in the wine, and the area in contact with the air also has a certain impact. For example, white wine is characterized by containing many ester molecules. When a sufficient amount of ester molecules evaporate into the air and are inhaled into the nasal cavity, people can smell the fragrance of the fruit. If there are many alcohol molecules at the same time, they will interfere with the aroma of these ester molecules. The volatilization of ester molecules is not greatly affected by temperature - that is, they evaporate quite quickly even at low temperatures. The volatilization of alcohol molecules slows down as the temperature decreases. Therefore, white wine is suitable for drinking at low temperatures - the alcohol molecules evaporate less while the ester molecules can evaporate fully, making it easier to experience the fruity aroma of the white wine. It is also suitable to use cups with smaller capacity and higher feet. In this way, when holding the cup, you can avoid the temperature of your hand being transferred to the cup body and causing the temperature of the wine to rise, and the small capacity also avoids the temperature rising due to not finishing the drink for a long time.

Red wine is another case. There are not so many ester molecules, and the flavor is mainly determined by alcohol molecules and volatile polyphenols. Both will evaporate at higher temperatures, so red wine does not mind rising temperatures. Higher temperatures are conducive to the release of these flavor molecules. In addition to volatile polyphenols, there are also many non-volatile polyphenols in wine. Polyphenols tend to have a bitter taste, and their oxidation in air can reduce this taste. Therefore, using a cup with a large capacity but a small mouth makes it easier to shake the wine in it. This not only helps the volatilization of flavor substances, but also helps the polyphenols in the wine to fully contact with the air, so that they can be oxidized and reduce the bitterness.

In fact, the volatilization of flavor substances in wine is much more complicated than this. For example, inside a cup, the volatilized molecules diffuse from bottom to top, and different types of molecules have different diffusion speeds. That is to say, the types and quantities of aroma molecules may be different at different heights above the wine in the glass. After you sniff it once, how long does it take for enough aroma to evaporate into the cup so that you can smell the same aroma again? These questions may seem boring, but scholars at the University of Neustadt are really interested in them. They used gas chromatography to detect molecules at different temperatures, at different times when poured into the glass, and at different heights above the wine in the glass, and identified more than 40 compounds.

In order to explore the "taste of the glass", scholars at Neustadt trained a group of people to identify ten representative volatile molecules in wine and rate their intensity, such as "buttery" and "floral". Then, they selected ten glasses with different cup bodies, cup heights and cup edges, poured the same wine into them, and asked them to smell the intensity of different aroma substances.

These people can really smell the difference in aroma caused by different cups. In different glasses, the intensity of the various volatile components smelled from the same wine varies. Increasing the height of the cup or increasing the diameter of the cup mouth will increase the aroma you smell. What subverts traditional cognition is that the slender cup suitable for white wine is better for tasting red wine than the cup with a large body and a small mouth - which is usually considered "suitable for red wine".

As scientific explorations, these studies are interesting. However, these results may not be of much guiding significance to most people - based on most people's perception of wine flavor, they may be far from being able to experience such subtle differences. So, don’t worry about what cup to use, just drink as long as you are happy.