Consider a tear. [I’m referring here to the tear that comes from our eyes, not the tear that occurs in a fabric, or the sort that runs up the inside surface of a wine glass.]
We can describe a tear in scientific terms. But this is a completely inadequate, and almost stupid way to describe a tear.
When we think of a tear in terms of emotions, it is suddenly powerful, profound and often quite precious.
A drop of liquid rolls down someone’s cheek. We observe it and cannot help be moved. [The fact that we are moved by this sight says something of the power of empathy in normal-functioning humans.]
What motivated that tear? The end of a relationship. A bereavement. Disapointment. A cruel word. Loss. Or even profound joy: a loved one returns, a child is born, we see someone achieve something remarkable, brave or unexpected.
There is so much meaning in a tear when it is described in emotional terms.
What about wine? Should we restrict ourselves to scientific, clinical assessments of wines? Can tasting notes – lists of descriptors – capture all that is in a wine?
Or do some wines possess something more? Like a tear, are they better described in emotional terms? Do they have a significance that is impossible to capture in the typical vocabulary of the wine taster?
4 Comments on Consider a tear
‘What motivated that tear?’
Killing of a hamster perhaps?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9429908/Anuj-Bidve-murderer-claims-in-police-interview-that-teardrop-tattoo-marks-death-of-hamster.html
Seeing someone drinking Blossom Hill brings me to tears. Is this the same thing?
I like this piece, Jamie. My state of utter demotivation as regards writing wine notes, for all the practical drawbacks this has, given the nature of amnesia, is largely to do with my inability to express my feelings about a wine in such emotional terms. I’m simply not really interested in expressing it in conventional formulae.
Emotion plays a key role in defining experience. Tasting a Lafite 19XX in a sterile lab scenario could never match a great bbq on a sunny evening with nearest and dearest and a ‘good’ bottle of something costing 5% of Lafite. The overall ’emotional package’ elevates the experience to give some sort of sensory benefit far greater than the simple liquid in the glass can deliver in isolation.
Emotion rocks !!