Feeling good and not so good

Earlier this week I managed to slip and bang my right ribs onto the edge of a big plastic container. It knocked the wind out of me for a moment, and hurt pretty badly. I hoped I'd only bruised myself, but I walked around outside for a minute and thought I was ok. Four days later I'm not feeling so good and guessing I have at least one broken rib. It's left me pretty uncomfortable where almost any task is painful or filled with the anticipation of pain. Things could be worse, but don't do something like this. It's not fun. I don't know if the doctor can do much for me, but I guess I better go see him just to know what's really going on.

Happily, I'm feeling very good about how this harvest is going. After anxiety about the hot summer weather and then dodging most of the forecated rain around harvest, the grapes looked and tasted really good. Then came worries about whether everything would go well with vinification, and so far it looks like the team's doing a great job. What I tasted today from the first two fermenters is very promising. Lots of  berry fruit and some meaty richness, but no pruney overripe flavors or lack of freshness, something hot years can give. 2009 isn't proving to be a typical hot year, and that's a good thing if you ask me. There's one other fermenter that's beginning to get active. It's hard to believe that everything should be safely in barrel in about 10 days. I'm excited.