So...Legs...You’ve probably heard mention made of a wine’s “legs.” They can be seen when you swirl your wine around in the glass and watch it run down the sides. The longer it takes the wine to fully run down the sides, the longer its legs are said to be. I had been mistakenly told years ago that the legs had only to do with a wine’s sugar content. The stickier and more sugary the wine, the longer it took it to run down the glass. This isn’t 100% INaccurate, but it isn’t 100% accurate either. More than sugar, alcohol is what affect the viscosity of the wine (science!) and therefore, the way it runs down and sticks to the inside of the glass. The higher alcohol content in the wine, the longer its legs will be. It’s a fun experiment to find a high alcohol red wine and a lower alcohol red wine (the percentages are listed on the label) and to swirl them each to see how they move. And soon, you’ll be able to impress your friends by guessing a wine’s alcohol content, simply by swirling it in the glass, before you even taste or sniff. Go impress some folks!
Did you know?
Wine is taxed by alcohol content. Wines under 14% alcohol are taxed at a different rate than those over 14%. This gives winemakers an incentive to keep them just under 14%, so you'll o
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