When wine is swirled in a glass, droplets – the ‘tears’ or the ‘legs’ – cling to the sides of the glass and come back down slowly. That is the phenomenon called capillarity, which informs one on the amount of alcohol present in the wine: the higher the alcohol content, the more ‘legs’ the wine will have. Consequently, wines from sunny and warm regions – more concentrated in sugars and therefore in alcohol – have more ‘tears’ than Northern wines. Contrary to popular belief, the quantity of ‘tears’ has nothing to do with the quality of the wine, but everything to do with the laws of physics.