THE GREAT "LEGS" MYTH


The term "legs" as it relates to wine is a fitting description for those streaks of liquid that slowly stream down the inside of fine stemware once the glass has been given a swirl. Go ahead and try it. Place a tasting size portion of red or white wine into a nice wine glass and give it a good swirl. Hold the glass up to the light and focus on the tributaries seeping down the sides. What does it all mean?

The French poetically refer to these as "tears" and the mainstay wine community likes to equate this to quality, body, aromatics, and alcohol content. During a wine tasting at a wonderful modern bodega in la Rioja, Spain, our hostess went into great detail about how there are actually two sets of legs, one representing glycerin for the body of the wine and the other set, which actually moved in an upward motion, representing the presence and amount of alcohol in the wine. She was only partially correct.

While I would like to be able to propagate the romantic notion that the presence of legs has something to do with the quality of the wine, I unfortunately cannot. Legs are due to the simple fact there is alcohol (ethanol) in wine and it evaporates more quickly than water. While it is a measure of the alcohol content of a wine, it has nothing to do with body, taste or sweetness. And fortunately for all of us, there is no glycerin in wine; it is actually glycerol, a very viscous liquid in minute amounts.

I won't go into the physics and chemistry involved in this but there is a surface tension issue where the alcohol has a thin layer of water on it as the wine gravitates down the side of the glass. Since the alcohol evaporates more quickly, it actually crawls up the inside of the glass while the water runs downward. The ethanol arches upward and the water, due to gravity, trickles downward. Romantic, huh?

So if you want to test your friends the next time you get together to quaff a good wine, you can give your glass a good swirl and emotionally proclaim, "Look at those legs, it must be a great wine," and then simply sit down and smile.