The cup is a container, theoretically speaking, it should not affect the taste of the beverage inside. However, the ‘taste’ people usually talk about is not the five basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and fresh in the scientific sense, but the comprehensive sensory experience of the brain, including appearance, color, texture, smell, and taste, etc. In this comprehensive experience process, the psychological factors cannot be ignored. For example, ancient people said ‘The beautiful wine in the night’s glow cup,’ which is roughly a combination of wine and the luminous cup, which will give people a more wonderful experience. In the process of tea tasting, the role of the tea set is elevated to a higher level, so to speak, ‘The vessel is the father of tea’ – the importance of the tea set is on par with water, the ‘mother of tea’.

Exquisite cups naturally make people feel delighted and bring pleasant visual and psychological experiences. Then, does the cup have an impact on the perception of flavor?

In France, the standard wine glass requires the height of the bowl to be twice the diameter, and this French standard is consistent with the international standard. But is this shape really the most reasonable? When the French and international standards were established, they were mainly based on tradition and habit, without much scientific basis. There is a university in Germany called Neustadt, and their winemaking department is very famous. The wine glasses used by German wine enthusiasts are generally wider than the French and international standard cups. The winemaking professors of this university studied the influence of the shape and size of the cup on the perception of aroma.

The most abundant components in wine are water and alcohol, but it is the ‘trace components’ that determine the flavor and mouthfeel of wine. The types and quantities of trace components in different wines vary, and the aroma detected during tasting is determined by the volatile molecules. How much a substance can evaporate is mainly determined by temperature and its content in the wine, as well as the area of contact with air. 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 through the nose, the fruity fragrance is detected. If there are many alcohol molecules at the same time, they will interfere with the fragrance of these ester molecules. The evaporation of ester molecules is not significantly affected by temperature – that is to say, they evaporate quite quickly even at low temperatures. On the other hand, the evaporation of alcohol molecules slows down as the temperature decreases. Therefore, white wine is suitable for drinking at low temperatures – with fewer alcohol molecules evaporating and ester molecules fully evaporating, making it easier to experience the fruity fragrance of white wine. Moreover, it is advisable to use cups with a smaller capacity and higher foot. In this way, when holding the cup, the temperature of the hand can be avoided from transferring to the cup body, thus preventing the wine temperature from rising, and the smaller capacity also prevents the temperature from rising due to not being consumed in a timely manner.

Red wine is another case. There are fewer ester molecules in it, and the flavor is mainly determined by alcohol molecules and volatile polyphenols. Both will volatilize at higher temperatures, so red wine does not care about the rise in temperature; higher temperatures are more conducive to the release of these flavor molecules. In addition to the volatile polyphenols, there are many non-volatile polyphenols in the wine. Polyphenols often have a bitter taste, and they can reduce this taste when oxidized in the air. Therefore, using a cup with a large capacity but a small rim, which is convenient for swirling the wine inside, not only helps the volatilization of flavor substances but also facilitates the full contact of the polyphenols in the wine with the air, reducing the bitterness.

In fact, the volatilization of flavor substances in wine is much more complex than this. For example, in the cup, the emitted molecules spread from bottom to top, and different types of molecules have different diffusion speeds. That is to say, the types and amounts of aromatic molecules at different heights above the cup in the wine may be different. After one sniff, how long does it take for the cup to volatilize enough quantity to be able to smell the same aroma again? These questions may seem trivial, but the scholars at Noyes State University are really interested. They used gas chromatography to detect molecules at different temperatures, poured into the cup for different lengths of time, and at different heights above the cup, identifying more than forty compounds.

To explore the ‘taste of the cup’, scholars at Noyes State trained a group of people to identify ten representative volatile molecules in wine and evaluate their intensity, such as ‘buttery taste’, ‘floral scent’, and so on. Then, they chose ten different cups with different heights and rims, poured the same type of wine into them, and let them smell the intensity of different aromatic substances.

These people can really distinguish the differences in aroma caused by different cups. In different cups, the same type of wine is perceived with different intensities of volatile components. Increasing the height of the cup or increasing the diameter of the rim will increase the perceived aroma. What is颠覆 traditional cognition is that the thin and tall cup suitable for white wine is also better than the cup with a larger body and smaller rim – usually considered ‘suitable for red wine’ – when used to taste red wine.

As scientific exploration, these studies are very interesting. However, for most people, these results may not have much guiding significance – the perception of wine flavor by most people may not be able to experience such subtle differences. Therefore, don’t worry about what kind of cup to use, just enjoy your drink as you wish.