Six Months

I've been struggling with feeling sad lately. This is not depression, or at least not full blown depression. It's more like an ongoing feeling of sorrow. It is with me all the time, no matter what I am doing. Even when I am having fun, enjoying myself with Katherine or with others, doing something I love to do, this feeling drapes itself over me, making my heart heavy, weakening my spirit.

Yesterday we started a new batch of wine. This particular red wine is one which needs to mature for at least 6 months in the bottle before it will start to get really good. It's a French Cabernet Sauvignon which, when mature, will be soft and mellow, with a pleasant fruity flavour and very little punch in the back end. It will be wonderful to drink, easy on the palate, and good with just about everything.

As I thought about the timeline, I realized that this might just be the first batch of wine I make where I might possibly not get to drink it. I made it yesterday, June 3rd. We will bottle it sometime in late August, most likely on the 20th. This means the earliest consumption date should be about March 1, 2017. That's an awful long way away for me, possibly too long.

There is, of course, a solution to this, in fact a couple of solutions. I could drink the wine early. It will taste "fresh", carrying a bitter aftertaste. Or I could stop making the high quality wines I like, changing over to wine kits which only need to mature for a month or so. These kits lack the rich, full flavour that I like, but are certainly drinkable. Either choice is less than fulfilling, less that optimal, but they are choices nonetheless.

This is not the cause of my sadness. It is a reflection of it. Sadness like this makes me see the world differently, makes me think about timelines and losses. I am not sure which comes first, if I am sad because I think about these things, or if I think about these things because I am sad. Either way, it is burdensome, wearying. It tires me, at a time when I am tired from so much else. All I want is to make wine, to enjoy the fruits of my labours, and to forget about what might happen in six months. But there you go.