Wine myths: of tastebuds and legs

You are reading about how to taste wine or you’re listening to someone talk about the subject and the topics of tastebuds and legs come up. In the first instance, almost invariably you will see or have described by the teacher the top of the tongue sectioned off. “This part is where we our ‘sweet tastebuds’ are concentrated, this part is where our ‘sour tastebuds’ are located” and so on with the four major tongue tastes (including bitter and salty: good thing no one has tackled the umami zone).

The March, 2001 issue of Scientific American had a neat article by David V. Smith and Robert F. Margolskee about the subject complete with a big color rendition of the tongue. The authors noted that the sectioning of the tongue—depicted usually as maps of the organ--into taste areas was done in the early 20th century based on faulty takes on research back to the 19th century. “In reality” they state, that “all qualities of taste can be elicited from all the regions of the tongue…”.

In the second instance, you’ve seen people swirling their glass to check out the “legs” (or tears, robe, etc.). These are the clear rivulets of liquid that fall down from the inside upper portion of the glass after you have stopped swirling. It is still taught and it is still printed that legs tells you how much glycerin the wine has.

In reality, glycerin has little to do with the great majority of wines. So what makes the legs fall quickly or slowly? According to Professor Emile Peynaud in “The Taste of Wine”, in dry wines, whether the legs fall quickly or slowly down the glass has to do with how much alcohol is in the wine. The more quickly the legs fall, the less alcohol, the more slowly, more.

So, with two glass of dry wine in your hands you can tell which is more alcoholic just by the fall of the legs. With sweeter wines, all bets are off as the sugar in the wine slows down the fall making a precise read impossible.

The major group of wines—quite small overall –where glycerin does play a role in the legs is in wines like Sauternes which have been affected by a fungus called botrytis. These wines also have a great amount of sugar, so gauging alcohol in them by their legs is fruitless, so to speak.