Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

I don't know a lot about wine (except that I like to drink it), and I don't want to know a lot about wine and have another good taste I can't afford (like organic food, 1940's teak furniture and high thread count sheets)...but J got chatting with the wine store guy who steered our pinot noir fancy toward Oregon's Willamette Valley. Something about the latitude being the same as France...Though rustic as we are, we only buy wine to drink it immediately, so we brought home La Bete (that's with a little hat over the first e- how to conjure this accent mark in blogger?) and each had a glass on my birthday. After a first sip and then a second and a third, we looked at each other puzzlingly. I could feel the wine bounce off my tongue- almost as if it were carbonated. It tasted full of potential but it was like dud fireworks. So we corked it up and went back to it the next day. The next day it was a totally different wine: fruity, sultry, full-figured. It was Mae West in a glass. I've never before tasted such a difference breathing (the wine) can make, or perhaps it was just at odds with the Spanish omelet of night 1. But I think it was the breathing. That bottle polished off, we'll see if today's find, Firesteed, another pinot in Bete's neighborhood, represents.

Perhaps I'm most excited by these finds because they mean another reason to go to Oregon (perhaps my favorite state). My dosha likes the cool, wet weather, and I long to revisit Portland's Japanese Gardens and hike along the Columbia River gorge.