The rhetoric of emotion

To define a wine as emotionally moving means taking a totally subjective opinion and expecting that what may move you can also emotionally move others.

What is an emotion? According to Wikipedia, but also to various encyclopedias and dictionaries, it is a mental and physiological state associated with psychological factors that involve subjective experiences. Thus it is subjective. This is because what may be emotionally moving for me might not, and usually is not, be so for others. In other words, the love for a person, religious faith, a song, can be emotionally moving to some but not to others.

Thus when one speaks about “emotionally moving wines” this, for me, is a rhetorical statement, one which seeks to create a consensus on something which by its subjective nature is not easy to find agreement on. For me, for example, beyond factors that are much more important, I am “moved”, or less rhetorically interested in, by wines that are not at all emotionally moving for others. But there is no harm in that.

The problem is that the alleged capacity of a particular wine to “emotionally move” risks becoming a discriminating qualitative factor and, here, frankly, there is something to object to. This because if one is “moved” by an organoleptic sensation, perhaps this means that there is no other aspect to be “moved”by. Then again, if a wine is “emotionally moving”, there is no longer any need for wine appreciation courses, technology, winemaking and winegrowing methods, all this for the fact that certain aspects of one’s own experience are sufficient enough. I am “moved” by a wine that is thus good, for me, for my followers and all those who consider themselves on my level.

Someone recently defined me as “démodé”, and being 68 years old can understand why. Nevertheless, I still get emotionally “moved”, perhaps not over a wine that “moves” some “influencer” but rather by stories, people, traditions and even winemaking methods and technology. Then there are my own personal affections but these are private feelings that I share with others only up to a certain point.