Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?

Bono wasn't thinking of wine when he wrote these lyrics for the song, City of Blinding Lights.

But they immediately came to mind when recently sampling a number of over-ripe, over-oaked, over-alcohol, over-everything wines from our region. While swirling, sniffing, and tasting these wines, it was as if the grapes were sadly asking, "Can you see the beauty inside of me?", in hopes that something might be left to express their true nature.

Alas, it was not to be, for it seems the harvest had come too late, the oak had been overplayed, and the alcohol had become too strong for the vitis vinifera inside each of these wines to show its beauty. After a second taste validated my initial impression, the only expression coming from the grapes seemed to be rhetorical: "What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?."

Whenever opening a bottle of wine, I yearn to taste the beauty inside the grape, for it is the vitis vinifera of the wine that carries distinct signatures indicating the varietal, vineyard and vintage from which it was sourced. That is the beauty of wine, the essence of what it offers each of us in every glass.

When present, it is this beauty that captivates, beckoning me to take pause and ponder what signals the grapes are sending. These signals inform me not only what grapes I am consuming, but can also indicate where they were grown and even when they were harvested.

It is through these signals that I have created a liking for wines from distinct places in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, the Walla Walla Valley in Washington, and other areas of our region. Even still, there are times when these signals are destroyed by a heavy hand in either the vineyard or the winery.

Regardless, I continue to search for this beauty with every new bottle of Pacific Northwest wine opened. For it is only through a broad and varied tasting of wine that one can start to discover this beauty. As a result, one can begin to truly understand the larger context surrounding each wine's varietal, vineyard, and vintage.

Jamie Goode in a commentary on Wine and Beauty suggests, "To a degree, if we want to find beauty in a wine, we have to look for it. We also have to know what we are looking for – learning and context are very important in wine tasting."

I agree. You do have to know what you are looking for in a wine, but this depends on the beauty being present for you to discover. Otherwise, my reaction is similar to Bono's next line in his song, "And I miss you when you're not around".

Unfortunately, there just seems to be a lot of Oregon and Washington wines these days where I am left singing this chorus again and again.