Wine Tour Guide 101

Do Wine Streaks Reveal The Character Of Wine?

November 11th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

After swirling red wine in a glass, there are streaks of the wine clinging on and flowing down the wall of the glass. Do these streaks reveal the character of the wine?

Streaks, “legs” or “tears” appear to be a constant source of mystery and intrigue to wine drinkers. It is perfectly true that I have forgotten more chemistry than I can recall, but this phenomenon has much to do with the differences between the surface tension properties and the boiling points of the water and alcohol, the major liquid constituents of wine.

Without entering into a complex - and frankly rather boring - dialogs to explain the process, the arcs of liquid that accumulate on the inside of the glass, which then roll back into the wine in arcs or streaks, tend to reflect the alcoholics strength of the wine.

You do not het these tears or streaks in solutions of either pure water or alcohol - they are much a reflection of the point of difference between these constituent parts - so the more alcohol there is in the wine, the greater the effect.

Similiarly, late harvest dessert wines made from grapes affected with botrytis cinerea tend to contain a higher level of glycerol than normal table wines, so they cal also develop significant streaking in the glass without exceptionally high levels of alcohol.

From the drinker’s perspective, there is some value to be gained by examining these tears. That is because it is not unusual these days to find table wines (mainly reds) with alcoholic strengths well over 15% by volume.

Very few table (non-fortified) wines can carry strengths of this nature, and still remain balanced, high quality wines - although it is undeniable that some can and do. If you share my view, it is worth remembering that labeling regulations permit a fairly high degree of elasticity when recording the alcoholic strength of wines.

That is largely because it is difficult to get consistent results for the same wine, since the precise measurement of alcohol in wine is a relatively inexact science.

Different laboratories frequently arrive at different results for the same wine. So it is entirely possible that a wine whose label declares a strength of 14.5% could in fact be a whopping 16% by volume, well in excess of what I believe is a balanced level in table wines.

So, do examined the tears. If it is a style of wine that does tend to be made into ultra-high alcoholic strengths, you may have reason to question its quality and balance having checked the extent of the streaks in the glass.

Don’t reject a wine on this visual basis alone, but let it be an indicator that the wine might smell excessively spirity, or taste rather too warm and/or sweet, which are the most obvious effects of an unbalanced measures of alcohol.

Remember, however, that wine is there to drink. Don’t let a visual cure upset your enjoyment of an otherwise wonderful wine.