Glass shape, and how wine tastes

Around a month ago there was a flurry of interest in the wine world because new research had supposedly proved that wine glass shape is important for how wine tastes.  See for example the Open Culture and National Geographic articles. Being naturally sceptical, I dug out the abstract for the paper describing the research, and then the paper itself.  In brief, the paper proves no such thing, and doesn’t claim to either.  However, if you are intrigued and want to know what the paper actually relates to, read on…

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It describes a novel technique for measuring the presence of ethanol vapour, and the authors used the technique to measure ethanol at the mouths of various glasses containing wine. Note that a) they measured ethanol vapour concentrations and b) the measurements were made on vertically standing glasses, presumably ones that had been standing for some time to allow the vapour patterns to stabilise.  Sadly for wine lovers, they did not measure the concentrations of the interesting aromatic compounds that give wines their smell and flavour, and they did not measure anything from a glass that had being swirled a little and inclined towards the mouth.

So what possible interest could this be to wine drinkers?  Very little I would suggest, notwithstanding some remarks made in the National Geographic article about alcohol suppressing flavours, the questionable evidence for which seems to relate to alcohol in solution anyway, not the vapour form. However, there was also an intriguing comment by the original authors referring to the ring-shaped alcohol pattern in the mouth of the Cabernet Sauvignon glass: This phenomenon allows us to smell the aroma of the wine in the center of the glass at a lower alcohol concentration. Accordingly, the shape of the wine glass has a very sophisticated and functional design for tasting and enjoying the aroma of wine.  A strange comment I thought, which came out of the blue and with little explanation or justification.  It could be construed as a nod to Riedel who provided “technical assistance and advice”, but I wouldn’t dream of being so cynical.

Author: Steve Slatcher

Wine enthusiast

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