Coffee vs the cup

When you reach for a favourite mug or cup to drink your coffee from, your choice may be influenced by the vessel’s design – how comfortable it is to hold, for example. But what you might not be aware of in making your selection is its influence on how your beverage will taste.

An espresso served in a takeaway cup many sizes too large won’t taste as good one served in a cup designed specifically for it. And that takeaway container, even if correctly proportioned, won’t give you as good a coffee-drinking experience as a cup that doesn’t have a lid clamped on top, trapping the aromas which so heavily influence taste perception.

Coffee is big business, and key players such as Nespresso want to make sure customers get the optimum drinking experience, hence the importance placed on accessories. They’re not just any old cups, saucers and spoons on sale in those chichi boutiques, they’re designed by leading studios in collaboration with coffee experts. But do they actually make coffee taste better?

Nespresso worked with Riedel, the Austrian company famous for designing “grape varietal specific” wine glasses, to design glasses specifically for coffee tasting, and the theory was put to the test at a recent London showcase to launch the company’s first smartphone-connected machine, the Prodigio.

Two coffees are placed in front of us, in the rather strange-looking glasses, one of which has a narrower opening at the top. There are distinct differences in aroma and taste, but it's the same coffee. "Because this is a dark roasted coffee, Arpeggio, that aperture has given a funnel for those darker roast notes to emanate and come through," Jonathon Sims, coffee expertise manager says. The glass with the wider aperture was designed to work with lighter roast coffees.

The challenge designers face when working with Nespresso is to come up with "a generic cup shape that will give full expression to both intense and mild coffees," Sims says, before introducing Elric Petit of the Swiss design studio Big-Game, responsible for the company's most recent cup collection, Pure.

It’s a simple white porcelain design, based on the square shape that is the coffee company’s “monogram” according to Petit – this forms the base of the cups – and the circle that is a reflection of the capsule shape.

Coffee, coffee machines, coffee cups . . . what’s next? Coffee cafés, it seems. The first Nespresso Café opened in Vienna 12 months ago, and another will open in the City of London this year. Prodigio smart phone-connected coffee machines are on sale at the Nespresso boutique in Duke Street, Dublin 2, and in Brown Thomas, Dublin and Limerick (from €199)