No, we are not talking about a pin up here.
Legs of wine are those clear lines you see on the edge of a glass of wine when you swirl it. Most people swirl for the many aromas coming out of a swirled glass of wine. The legs seen are simply glycerol (glycerine) just another form of alcohol. This one is a by-product of fermentatin. Being thicker, (more viscous) than water or ethyl alcohol, it adheres to the glass and gently flows down. Pretty, but not much else. It is practically tastless, even in its purest form and is easily digestible. It does however have some sweetness. Mostly it is used in food processing, as a liqueur thickner, body lotion, or in Pharmaceuticals etc. The family of alcohols is as many as a French-Canadian or Irish-Canadian family ranging from alcohol in wine to gas in your tank or ethylene glycol in your radiator.
Obviously some of them are highly poisonous (anti-freeze) and some of them are very digestible. No harm done.
So do legs of wine indicate the quality and age of the wine? Not a bit. All wines have legs. The only difference is that an older wine has had more time to form it.
So swirl on folks, just keep your mind on the aromas, not the legs.
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And now its time for the Question of the Decade!
Get ready for a jaw droper!
A fellow comes in and asks if we have experience distilling the alcohol out of anti-freeze for the purpose of consumption. This is a shocking question for a number of reasons. The first being, as we told him, that the type of alcohol found in anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) is not what people consume and generally think of as alcohol (ethynol). In fact, we insisted that this would be poisonous and not something anyone should try. This fellow said he intended to try it anyway. Not surprisingly, we have not seen him back since.