The purchase of wine is 10 per cent higher when you’re given a larger glass

It's safe to say a lot of us will be having a few glasses of wine over the Christmas break.

However, it turns out we're drinking more than we should. Scientists at the University of Cambridge are claiming that drinking wine from a larger glass (even if the amount of wine is the same as would be in a smaller glass) can encourage you to drink more. Apparently the team found that a bigger glass makes the drinker consume wine faster and therefore they end up purchasing more. A bar and restaurant in Cambridge, The Pint Shop, changed the size of their wine glasses at fortnightly intervals and they found that the volume of wine purchases was almost 10 per cent higher when using the larger glasses. Speaking about the findings, lead author of the study Dr. Rachel Pechey said:

“We found that increasing the size of wine glasses, even without increasing the amount of wine, leads people to drink more. “It’s not obvious why this should be the case, but one reason may be that larger glasses change our perceptions of the amount of wine, leading us to drink faster and order more. “But it’s interesting that we didn’t see the opposite effect when we switched to smaller wine glasses.”

The research was published in the BMC Public Health journal.