What are wine legs?

I’m sure if you’re on the Cheeky Vino you like drinking wine. Me too. But when it comes to understanding it and all the in’s and outs, it can get complicated. There is plenty to learn about wine. But there are some terms that are just plain confusing! One of these terms is ‘wine legs’, and I decided this week that I’d dive into the question of ‘what are wine legs?’

We’ve all been there. You’re at a wine tasting and you see someone swirl their glass, take a sip and use some term you’ve never heard of. You’re left wondering what on earth that term means and if you too should be using that term. This is what sometimes makes wine so inaccessible. We’re just here to drink good wine and enjoy it, learning a bit while we do it.

Some of the terms, I’ll give you, are relevant and help to describe wine. But there are some that are so confusing, and really, they don’t actually mean anything. So let’s dive into why wine legs aren’t really something you need to worry about.

What on earth are wine legs?

via Giphy

So what are wine legs? My mind goes straight to imagining a wine bottle with some legs on the bottom. This is mildly terrifying to me as I’d rather that the wine bottle can’t run away from me!

Wine legs, or tears if you’re French, describe the streaks of wine on the side of your wine glass. You can see them when you pour wine into your glass. As you tip the glass and then put it back down, you’ll see that the wine flows down the side of the glass in streaks. Depending on the wine, this will look different. Some wines will flow down quickly, some slowly. Some will be thick with legs, some will have little.

These legs were once thought to be something that told you about a wine’s quality. If the wine had more legs, it was higher quality. This is why a lot of your classic wine snobs will use this descriptor because let’s be honest it makes them appear fancier.

However, legs really tell you little about the actual wine. It has much less to do with quality than it does physics and alcohol content.

Ok, don’t let your eyes glaze over yet, because this is wine science so it’s the best kind! Wine is a mixture of alcohol and water. When the wine mixes with the air, it creates wine legs. Why? Well, the alcohol evaporates faster than water because of its lower surface tension. This causes concentration to increase, which pushes the legs up the glass. But then our mate gravity kicks in and forces to liquid to run back down the glass.

So what does it all mean?

via Giphy

Now that we’ve debunked this wine term, what does it mean? Some think that this shows the viscosity of the wine aka how alcoholic it is. This is partially true, but it can also mean other things. Here are some of the effects:

• Wines with higher alcohol levels have a higher density, sometimes producing slower and thicker legs than those with a lower alcohol content
• Wines that are sweeter will also flow more slowly down the side of a glass
• The temperature and humidity of the room affect the wine legs too. So you can see the difference in how they form in different seasons

In short? The wine legs can tell you a lot of things, including what the temperate is where you are sipping. But they don’t really tell you much more about the wine other than that it’s alcoholic. But you knew that already, right?