Study suggests selling wine in larger glasses causes people to drink more

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If your go-to wine bar serves drinks in spacious, bulbous wine glasses, beware — you may be sipping more wine, faster than usual.

New research from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom suggests that restaurants and bars that sell and serve wine in larger glasses cause patrons to drink more, even if the amount of alcohol doesn't vary.

Over 16 weeks, researchers led by Marcus Munafo of the Unviersity of Bristol studied serving patterns at a dual bar and restaurant establishment called The Pint Shop in Cambridge. Over the course of the study, the space's owners alternated between three different glass sizes: the "standard" 300 ml, a larger 370 ml, and a smaller 250 ml.

Not only did they find that people tended to buy more wine when the bar served alcohol in larger glasses, they also found that it was a significant amount more; patrons bought an average of 9.4 percent more wine when it was served in the 370 ml glass, as opposed to the standard 300 ml glass.

"We found that increasing the size of wine glasses, even without increasing the amount of wine, leads people to drink more," says Dr Rachel Pechey from the Behavior and Health Research Unit at Cambridge. "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 researchers are continuing to study the effects to confirm their hypothesis.

Alyssa Pereira is a staff writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.