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Legs, screwcaps, room temperature, ageing, sulphites, price — one verdict each, and the reason behind it.
All six of these wine rules are false — not “it depends”, but false, with published evidence behind every verdict. They survive because they sound like expertise.
Each gets a flat verdict and the evidence it fails on. If you act on one, make it the temperature myth: it is the only one of the six that changes how tonight’s bottle actually tastes.
| The claim | Verdict | What is true |
|---|---|---|
| Thick legs mean a better wine | False | Legs track alcohol only |
| Screwcaps mean cheap wine | False | Domaine Laroche seals Grand Cru |
| Red at room temperature | False | 12–18°C (54–64°F), not 20–22°C |
| Older is always better | False | Over 90% is made to drink young |
| Sulphites cause the headache | False | White is allowed more than red |
| Expensive tastes better | False | Untrained tasters rated pricier lower |
James Thomson explained wine tears in 1855: alcohol evaporates faster than water from the film on the glass, and surface tension drags liquid up until it beads and falls. This Marangoni effect is driven by one variable — alcohol. Sugar and glycerol thicken the tears in a Sauternes or a Port, but nothing in the film reports on quality. Lay a coaster over the glass, stop the evaporation, and the legs vanish completely. A 16% Amarone throws heavy legs; so does a 16% supermarket red at a fifth of the price. The ABV on the label says it faster.
Domaine Laroche has bottled its Grand Cru Chablis under screwcap since the 2001 vintage, and Jeffrey Grosset led a group of Clare Valley growers who bottled their Riesling under cap in July 2000. In Australia and New Zealand the cap has since overtaken cork as the most common closure. The driver was cork taint: the cork industry body APCOR puts the rate at 0.7–1.2%, while a 2005 Wine Spectator blind tasting of 2,800 bottles in Napa found 7%. Cork has improved sharply since, but a screwcap cannot be corked.
The rule comes from chambré, French for bringing a bottle up to the temperature of the room — and those rooms were unheated, roughly 15–18°C (59–64°F). Yours is 20–22°C (68–72°F), where alcohol turns sharp and fruit goes jammy. Reach for the fridge, not the decanter: twenty minutes for Cabernet or Syrah, half an hour for Beaujolais, which peaks at 13–14°C (55–57°F). Our serving temperature guide has every style, or scan the bottle in Winelingo and it returns the range for that wine.
Kevin Zraly of the Windows on the World Wine School is blunt: more than 90% of the world’s wine is meant to be drunk inside a year, and under 1% is built to age past five. Ageing needs a preservative — tannin, acidity or sugar — so Nebbiolo, Riesling and Sauternes repay patience while Provence rosé does not. The bottle you are saving for a special occasion is probably tonight’s: a supermarket Merlot kept twelve years is not a treasure, it is brown.
EU law caps total sulphur dioxide in dry wine at 150 mg per litre for red and 200 mg for white and rosé (sweet wines are allowed more). White is legally allowed more, yet nobody blames Sancerre for their headache, and dried fruit carries more than red wine. That “contains sulphites” line is an allergen notice tripped at just 10 mg per litre, for the few with real sulphite sensitivity — which presents as asthma-type breathing trouble rather than head pain. In Scientific Reports in 2023, Devi, Levin and Waterhouse showed quercetin-3-glucuronide inhibits ALDH2, the enzyme that clears acetaldehyde. They call it a hypothesis awaiting human trials. Either way, “sulphite-free” will not spare you.
In 2008 Robin Goldstein and five co-authors published “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” in the Journal of Wine Economics. Across more than 6,000 blind tastings the correlation between price and rating came out small and negative: tasters without wine training enjoyed the dearer bottles slightly less, and trimming the cheapest and most expensive tenths of the range strengthened that result rather than rescuing it. Only among trained tasters did the relationship turn non-negative — training does not let you read price off the glass, it stops you marking price down. Show the label and everything moves: Frédéric Brochet poured one mid-range Bordeaux from two bottles, and tasters called it complex from the grand cru bottle, faulty from the cheap one. Price buys old vines, low yields and scarcity — real things, none of them your enjoyment. Spend the difference on tasting more widely.
FAQ
No. Legs, or tears, are the Marangoni effect, first explained by James Thomson in 1855: alcohol evaporates faster than water and drags liquid up the glass. Their intensity depends only on alcohol content, and covering the glass stops them entirely. They tell you nothing about quality or sweetness.
No. Domaine Laroche has sealed Grand Cru Chablis under screwcap since the 2001 vintage, and Clare Valley Riesling producers moved in 2000. Across Australia and New Zealand the screwcap is now the normal closure. Its real advantage is that it cannot be corked, so it is the safer seal for anything you will drink within five years.
The evidence says no. EU rules allow more sulphite in white wine (200 mg per litre) than in red (150 mg per litre), and dried fruit carries more than red wine. Sulphite sensitivity is real but presents as asthma-type symptoms. A 2023 study in Scientific Reports points instead to quercetin inhibiting ALDH2, the enzyme that clears acetaldehyde.
Very rarely. More than 90% of the world’s wine is meant to be drunk within a year of production, and less than 1% is built to age beyond five. Ageing needs tannin, acidity or sugar to preserve the wine, which suits Nebbiolo, Riesling and Sauternes — not everyday reds or rosé.
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