High-Tech Japanese Camera Proves That the Shape of a Wine Glass Affects the Flavor of Wines

Japan­ese sci­en­tists have devel­oped a cam­era that con­firms what we’ve long sensed: “wine glass shape has a very sophis­ti­cat­ed func­tion­al design for tast­ing and enjoy­ing wine.” That’s what Kohji Mit­sub­ayashi, a researcher at the Tokyo Med­ical and Den­tal Uni­ver­si­ty, told Chem­istry World.

It’s a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, and I’d encour­age you to read this Chem­istry World arti­cle, but the upshot is this: Mitsubayashi’s team used a spe­cial cam­era to ana­lyze “dif­fer­ent wines, in dif­fer­ent glass­es – includ­ing dif­fer­ent shaped wine glass­es, a mar­ti­ni glass and a straight glass – at dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures.” And they found that “dif­fer­ent glass shapes and tem­per­a­tures can bring out com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent bou­quets and fin­ish­es from the same wine.”

In the video above, you can see the new-fan­gled cam­era in action, demon­strat­ing how wines at dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures (some­thing that’s affect­ed by the geom­e­try of the glass) release dif­fer­ent vapors. And those trans­late into dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Get more on this at Chem­istry World.

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