Ready for a virtual cocktail... ...or do we have to wait a bit longer?

Toneless colours

With regard to the visual aspect, a simple LED alters the colour of the transparent liquid to make it look like a drink flavoured with red berries, orange, mint, etc. There’s nothing new about that, as we’ve known for decades that the colour of a drink influences our perception of its flavour⁴, enabling an ordinary white wine to be passed off as a red.⁵ Colour isn’t everything though: The opacity or transparency of a liquid also plays an important role in how we perceive it. This characteristic cannot be modified here, making it impossible to simulate the whiteness of milk or the opacity of a full-bodied Bordeaux. The Vocktail’s use of LEDs to give water a particular colour opens up certain avenues but, rather than it being capable of simulating any drink, the range of possibilities is actually somewhat limited.

Following your nose

When it comes to aromas, the limitations are even more apparent. In fact, as it stands, if we fancied a Vocktail, we would need to have the aromas corresponding to the desired drinks on hand and ready to use: a mojito aroma, one for red wine, another for beer, Coke, and so on. Each in its own reservoir. The prototype has three reservoirs, which allow for a little fun but nothing like the hundreds of drinks imaginable. Ideally, we would need to have a stock of basic aromas which, when cleverly combined, would enable us to recreate the aroma of a real drink. That is far more complex than it seems, and would require dozens of reservoirs, making the cocktail glass significantly heavier. Precise, nuanced blending of each component proves another technological challenge. This idea was already floated at the turn of the 21^st century and start-ups promised the transfer of odours via the internet. This led to significant investments and a big buzz in specialist media and on early social networks, but to resounding flops once launched on the market.⁶ However, research is still ongoing, and it may well be possible, one day. There is still one problem with Vocktails though: Unfortunately they don’t release aromas in the right way. In fact, for the illusion to be convincing, it is important that we don’t just sniff the aroma, but that we exhale it. In other words, the aroma must stimulate our olfactory system by passing through the back of the throat as we exhale (retronasal perception) and not through the front of the nose as we inhale (orthonasal perception).⁷ The effect is not the same; only retronasal perception creates the aromatic sensation of consuming a particular drink. Without it, a beverage may even seem more insipid, as, when we sniff it, we get the impression of a strong flavoured drink, followed by a disappointing void. So it’s a bit of a let-down! One solution, already used in scientific studies on the sense of smell, would be to insert a plastic tube into your nose to deliver the aromas directly to the back of your nasal cavity. But who would want to insert a tube into their nose at a ‘Vocktail party’?