Wednesday Wine 101
Legs noun \ˈleg also ˈlāg\
Lately at wine tastings the subject of legs, or tears, has come up. It’s probably among our Top 3 questions we’re most asked: what do legs signify, anyway?
In short, not much.
Years ago, people assumed the bolder the legs, the better the wine. That’s actually not true, and has more to do with science than quality. Here’s (hopefully) a fairly simple explanation to a surprisingly complex process:
The main ingredients in wine are water and alcohol. Alcohol evaporates more quickly than water, so, when you swirl your wine glass, or take a sip, the alcohol evaporates from the liquid sticking to the sides of the glass. When the alcohol disappears, the concentration of water increases, and the surface tension causes the water to bead. Gravity then forces those beads back down into the glass in streaks.
Basically, evaporation of alcohol is key to the leg formation, so legs are most often noticeable in wines of higher alcoholic strength.
Here’s a neat trick for your next dinner party: pour some wine in a jar and close it. Shake it up and watch for legs. Nothing will happen as their is no oxygen to evaporate the alcohol and start this scientific phenomenon.