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Admit it, you’ve heard it before. “This wine has great legs,” someone pronounces after staring carefully at their newly poured glass of wine. The person seems to know what she is talking about so you nod your head and smile, all the while thinking: legs, really?

So what’s this legs business all about? Ask a scientist and you’d be told it’s the Gibbs-Marangoni Effect. Same difference.

Here’s all you really need to know. Wine legs are the droplets or streaks that form on the inside of a wine glass after you swirl it around. Some people claim that the legs relate to the quality of the wine.

I call BS.

Wine legs mostly tell you one thing: the alcohol content of the wine. Trying to read something else into wine legs is just garbage. Even if it does give you an idea about alcohol content (more legs = higher alcohol) — so what? Most wines have the alcohol content printed right on the bottle. And alcohol content tells you nothing about flavor. Duh.

So don’t bother trying to read wine streaks inside your wine glass and don’t pay much attention to those claiming to do so. You’ll be much happier if you forget the legs and just concentrate on what matters most: taste.