The Way We Pour Wine is Affecting How Much We Drink, Says Science

Maybe you’re still hungover from the weekend. Maybe you’ve gone broke from all the wine pairing parties you host. Maybe you’re just a hypochondriac. Whatever the case, you’ve been feeling like you should cut back on the bubbly, but you don’t want to stop drinking entirely.

Luckily, all it might take to cut around 10% of your wine drinking is figuring out the proper way to pour. According to a joint research study out of Iowa State and Cornell, little visual tricks such as wine glass size and even mood lighting could seriously affect how we consume wine and how we interpret the sheer amount of wine we’re drinking. They asked 73 over-21 college students to pour themselves wine at a variety of different stations, where they manipulated various environmental cues and measured the results.

With our hats tipped to those fine guinea pigs, here are a few tips we gleaned on how to drink less/save cash and calories/basically, turn into a f@#king bore:

When selecting a glass, try to choose a taller one with a narrower mouth. Sure, champagne flutes can feel like nothing sometimes, but since we’re visual creatures, something about seeing our vintage fall higher in the glass tricks us into thinking we’re drinking more, up to 12% more (folks toting wider-glasses tended to overdrink).

Also make sure to pour on a table as opposed to in your hand. Not only is this more stable, but it makes you, fittingly, less heavy-handed. Table pourers drank around 12% less wine, according to the study.

Go red. Again, probably thanks to our trusty eyeballs, something about the contrast between the clear glass and red grapes helps us drink 9% less wine whenever we go Noir instead of Grigio. Hey, at least we’re 9% less likely to stain something, right?

H/T  NY Daily News