Is Your Glass Changing Your Tequila? The 20-Minute Experiment

[00:00:00] Have you ever poured a tequila that tasted fantastic, came back in 20 or 30 minutes later, and suddenly it tasted watered down? Here's the strange part. It might happen with certain glasses. So is your tequila actually losing alcohol while it sits there? Is the shape of the glass changing what you taste, or is there something completely different happening? A viewer sent me this question, and once I started looking into the chemistry behind it, I realized there's actually a lot going on inside of the different glasses. By the end of this video, I'm going to completely show you why the exact same tequila can taste completely different depending on the glass you pour into. When you pour tequila into a glass, it immediately starts interacting with the air around it. Tequila is primarily a mixture of ethanol and water, along with a whole bunch of volatile compounds responsible for the aromas and the flavors that we love. Ethanol is more volatile than water, meaning it evaporates more quickly. So technically, as tequila sits uncovered, you can lose some of the alcohol. But in 20 or 30 minutes, under normal conditions, I don't think we're losing enough alcohol to completely explain why tequila suddenly tastes watered down. I think a bigger factor is what's happening with the aromas, because a huge part of what we perceive as flavor actually comes from our sense of smell. Researchers studying blanco tequila have identified dozens of odor active compounds, including esters, aldehydes, acids, and other compounds responsible for fruity, floral, citrus, herbal, and cooked agave characteristics. Some of these compounds are more volatile than others. So from the moment you pour your tequila, they start leaving the liquid and moving into the space above it, which it's called the headspace. Eventually, some of them escape out of the glass altogether. And this is where your choice of glass becomes really interesting, because with a wide variety of glasses, rocks glasses, capitas, tequila flutes, Glencairns, brandy glasses, they all have different surface areas, bowl shapes, openings, amounts of head space. Scientists have actually visualized ethanol and vapors above different glass shapes and shown that the shape of the glass changes how the vapors behave around the opening. A narrow glass may concentrate certain aromas towards your nose, while a wide gas may allow them to dissipate into the room more quickly. So when somebody says their tequila tastes watered down after 20 to 30 minutes, the tequila probably hasn't suddenly became dramatically diluted. What's happening is the balance between the ethanol and aroma compounds reaching your nose and, and your brain, which interprets what the tequila tastes like. And they may feel thinner, flatter, or softer, or more water. So here's what I'm going to do today I have poured one of the best rapisados on the bar here. I love me some cmpre. Shout out to Rick, Alex, Monica and Sergio for making great tequila. And I have poured this in four specific different glasses. One, an actual glass from NOM 1414 which is where all this great aromas come from. This, this crazy whiskey rocks glass 41 in there. A nice respecto Glen Karen and this glassvin wine glass which for anejos and extra anejos I think is just a fantastic glass to get a nose out of. So I'm going to say this nose is good. [00:03:00] This nose is a little better out of that glass. [00:03:04] This nose is almost non existent and I get more smells and aromas out of this glass than I do any at all. So now, now it's about that 20 minute wait. So we're going to let this video run for 20 minutes. I'm actually going to run up to my desk and send a loan package out to a client. Come back 20 minutes from now, nose these and taste them and see how it's changed. [00:03:34] Okay, we are back and 20 minutes is up or thereabouts. I did 18 minutes on the phone so I'm thinking we're at 20 minutes. So I'm gonna go through and nose and taste these and tell you what has happened to the flavor and the smell. This one, the nose is about the same as it was. I didn't taste them before. I already knew what the tequila tasted like. So we're gonna see if I think it has degraded any. Nope, that tastes like fantastic siempre. Now we'll go to the Glencairn. Nose is about the same as it was when we were here last time 20 minutes ago. [00:04:03] I'm going to say that one has a little bit more flavor to it than what the first one did. I'm going to say the nose on this one is gone. There is not any smell that you can pick up that that's tequila sitting in there. I don't use this kind of glass ever anyway. But let's. Let's give it a taste. [00:04:19] Okay. That is really light. [00:04:21] I would almost say that tastes like it is watered down. Almost like a melted an ice cube in there. That. That's incredible. Let's go to the 1414 glass smell is a little lighter than what it was. If I remember this one had the most smell in all of them. So flavor is a little lighter. So this one actually has the most flavor. [00:04:43] So that's pretty cool. Little experiment. These four glasses give a different nose after 20 minutes and a different. Definitely a different taste. So here's what I'm going to say. Don't take 20 minutes to drink your drink. I drink tequila probably faster than what I should and probably more than what I should. So if you're doing it this way, you're probably drinking responsibly where I'm probably not. But I would say if you are going to take a lot of time to drink your tequila and you're drinking it neat, get the tightest glass that you can. That's going to hold as much flavor in there as possible and much nose in there as possible. And also if it's going to take you longer to drink it, I would maybe suggest pouring a little less in the glass and refilling it more than what you would do, filling it and then maybe losing some of that flavor over the time frame. I'm going to say thanks for the question and pointing this out that this has happened to you. Thanks for following my channel and asking me this. This was a really fun experiment. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to just blend all these together in one glass and drink them tonight and just be my final drink of the evening since I get ready to pack off and fly to Cabo here in a couple days. I want to say thanks to Siempre for making great tequila and always being such great partners and everything. And if you have a cool question or something that's happening to you when you drink tequila, put in the comments or hit me with a dm. I'd love to put together an experiment for you. Cheers. Enjoy good tequila. Have a fantastic night.