The Cup Matters More Than You Think

The Ridgeway starts in Ivinghoe, which is either inspiring or alarming depending on how you feel about 87 miles of chalk path. We're doing it in stages, the sensible approach, and last weekend was the first leg. Four of us, good weather, the kind of walk where you solve most of the world's problems by the time you reach the pub.

We ended up outside, which meant plastic cups. You know the thing that happens with beer in plastic. It tastes wrong. The beer was the same beer they were serving inside, same barrel, same afternoon. But thinner somehow, cheaper.

I've thought about this with tea for years.

There's a reason people have a favourite tea cup. Not just habit, not just sentimentality (though both of those are doing real work), but because what you drink from changes what you taste. Or at least what you perceive.

Russell Jones, in The Power of Your Senses, describes an experiment with coffee served in red and blue cups. The subject was asked which they preferred without knowing it was the same coffee. They consistently preferred the red cup, rating the contents as warmer and more comforting. Their judgements on the perception of flavour was being influenced by what they were actually seeing.

It sounds like a trick. It isn't. It's just how perception works.

Tea and memory does the same thing, and arguably more powerfully. A mug connected to somewhere, someone, or some point in your life arrives with context already loaded. That changes what you taste before the kettle's even boiled.

We did a lot of our tea tasting training blindfolded. It sounds eccentric, and it probably looked it. The point was to stop leaning on sight. Sight is the dominant sense, and it flatters or undermines everything else before you've registered you're doing it. Tasting blind forces you to actually taste.

You don't need a blindfold. But closing your eyes for the first few sips is worth trying, especially with a tea you think you know well. You might find it tastes different. You might find it tastes better.

And if you have a favourite tea cup, keep using it. There's nothing unscientific about that. But try your usual tea in fine china sometime, proper thin stuff. It feels like more of an occasion before you've taken a sip, and that matters more than you'd expect. Small cup, different experience entirely.

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