Wine Myths on Sommo — AI Wine Scanner, WSET Prep & Wine Journal App

Wine Legs: What Those Streaks on the Glass Actually Mean

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Someone at the table swirls their glass, watches the streaks slide down the inside, and nods approvingly: “good legs.” It is one of wine’s most beloved rituals, and it is built on a misunderstanding. Legs are real, the physics behind them is genuinely elegant, and they tell you almost nothing about quality. Here is what they actually say.

What Legs Are

Swirl a glass and a thin film of wine coats the inside. Within seconds the film gathers into droplets, called legs or tears, that streak back down toward the liquid. Every wine does it to some degree; the question is only how thick and how slow.

Sulfites in Wine: What They Are and Whether They Matter

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Flip over any bottle and there it is: contains sulfites. It reads like a warning, half the internet blames it for headaches, and an entire category of natural wine markets itself on leaving them out. So what are sulfites actually doing in your wine, and should you care? Short answer: they are the most misunderstood two words on the label.

What Sulfites Actually Do

Sulfites are compounds of sulfur dioxide (SO2), and they are wine’s bodyguard. They do two jobs: they block oxidation, which keeps white wine fresh instead of brown and flat, and they suppress rogue bacteria and yeasts that would otherwise turn your Chablis into something closer to vinegar. Without them, most wine could not survive shipping, shelf time or a warm boot of a car. Winemakers have burned sulfur in barrels since Roman times; this is not a modern industrial trick. Sulfur’s role in the winery is standard territory in the WSET Level 2 grape growing and winemaking quiz, incidentally.

Screw Cap vs Cork: Does It Actually Affect Quality?

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For decades a screw cap meant cheap wine and a cork meant the real thing. That shortcut is now wrong often enough to throw away. Some of the world’s best whites come under screw cap, and a cork is no promise of quality. Here is what each closure actually does, and whether it changes what is in your glass.

The Two Closures

A cork is punched from the bark of the cork oak, a natural material that has sealed bottles for centuries. A screw cap, properly a Stelvin closure, is an aluminium cap with a liner inside that sits over the bottle’s threads. Both have one main job: seal the wine and control the tiny amount of oxygen that reaches it over time.