Wine and emotions

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Wine and emotions

Yesterday I watched a film. It wasn’t a very good film, but it made me cry. As a bloke, this is hugely embarrassing. But there was something about the film that stirred my emotions.

What are emotions? What happens, physically, to cause tears to be released from the eyes? It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it – how our empathy allows us to feel another’s pain in such a way, even when it is portrayed badly in a film.

But the real question of interest here is this: can wine stir our emotions in such a way as to elicit this sort of level of reaction? Can wine make you blub?

On its own, I don’t think it can. For me, at least, the only time I have been really moved by a wine to the point of tears is with a profound wine coupled with a particular context, in which I was already a little emotionally vulnerable. My feeling is wine can make you cry if you are already softened up; if you have already been moved some distance along the emotional pathway before you taste the wine.

On its own a wine can be so good as to be moving. But not really in a welling-up sort of way. This is just my perspective, and – let’s face it – I am male, and I’m British, so I’m probably not the most emotionally fluent sort of guy.

I’d be interested to know of the experiences of others. What sort of emotions does wine stir in you?

8 Comments on Wine and emotions
wine journalist and flavour obsessive

8 thoughts on “Wine and emotions

  1. Hello Jamie,

    Well there are wines that make me shiver…but the only time a wine give me something special …well it was the first ones when i begin to really enjoy wine it was that first discovery that really make me wonder and travel in my imagination…not again i had those feelings…now i only remember that wine that regards to a moment in time…that special moment 🙂

  2. Wine can be a ‘memory jogger’, one sip of a certain wine can take me back to a place, a shared moment, an atmosphere and a feeling. It’s powerful just how a flavour can do that, for me that’s the emotion in wine.

  3. Sometimes when I taste really good Burgundy there is a moment of exquisite joy that there exists in the world a wine of such compelling beauty. Compared to the humdrum troubles of my day and the distressing scenes we hear about on the news every day, the tension and contradiction between these two absolutes moves me very profoundly. Mature Barolo also sometimes has the same effect but usually it is red Burgundy.

  4. great red burgundy or wine like La Chapelle 78 or quite recently Yquem 50. I am not an emotional person but sometimes a really great bottle does nearly make me blubber :)———well not really but you know what I mean

  5. The only wine that recently brought me to damp eyes was Percarlo 2010. It was a good damp eye moment, not a sad one. The only film that had me sadly blubbering like a 5 year old was Broken Circle Breakdown. Affected me in the exact opposite way that Percarlo did. Thank you Luca!

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