There are a lot of misconceptions about wine legs.

Wine legs are the streaks of water that form on the side of your wine glass.

Many associate wine legs with the quality of a wine. They believe that a wine is a high quality one if there are many wine legs forming on the glass. However, this belief is wrong.

Wine legs are also not related to the sweetness or body of the wine.

Rather, wine legs occur naturally in all wines due to the alcohol in the wine. This effect is called the Marangoni Effect. And before you think you can read the alcohol level in a wine based on how many wine legs there are, stop. Because you can’t.

Across wines, there’s only have a small variation in alcohol levels. They usually vary from 12% to 14%. That variation is not big enough for you to notice a telling difference in the wine leg pattern formed by two different wines. So instead of reading too much into them, just enjoy the visual effect of wine legs.

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