BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS

- TEARS

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We picked this wine on my Son's birthday. 
This bottle is adorned with my Son's Face.  - Young, Cash Holland Gilbert Saarloos
I hope he won't read this until he is older.
Cash was born weeks before we opened this tasting room. I was personally in a bad place. I had moved my family to the Valley away from opportunities and let's just say the boat was filling with water faster than I could bail it out. Every day was a struggle, more punches were being landed on me than I could swing back from. I had my second child on the way and I was drowning. That is when I rolled the dice on what now has become Saarloos and sons. One of the most pivotal moments of my life that came standing over my Newborn Son's Crib. I said to him, "Your father is not going to be a loser, I am about to work harder than any person I know, and you are going to be proud of me." My daughter is the reason we moved to this valley, and my son is the reason we stayed. Everyone has those moments, you feel weak, but they are the moments that you are your most vulnerable, but the promises you make in those moments are the ones you keep.  I wiped the tears from my face and went out to keep my promises. When I look at that kid I see my father, my grandfather, my uncles, great uncles, my brother. I see people who are just too dumb to quit even when the rest of the world would have years before. 

The wine in this bottle comes from the Little Boy Terrace. In 2015 we only had enough grapes to make 1 barrel.  
(See Bellow Left) 

My son crushed these grapes with his little feet. 

While is Father and his Grandfather watched.
1 Barrel from all of that acreage. From that Steep, dangerous climb of a terrace only 1 barrel of wine. 
Was it worth it? 
More than anything in my life. 
I have promises to keep.
 

This Review is by a Wine Family Member by the name of Mike Lamberti.
He has no formal wine training but likes to drink wine, a LOT of wine....
Thus he is OUR  KIND OF PEOPLE. 
He is a Wino Not a Snob.

He and His Beautiful, too good for him wife, did this on their own. 
If you want to do it, just email me your notes, I'll post that stuff, I don't care. This isn't even a real business.

Tears

The Look:
Intensity: Deep
Color: Garnet
Viscocity: Med+

The Smell:
Intensity: Med+
Fruit: Black Olive, Black Cherry, Pomegranate Syrup
Herb/Floral: Eucalyptus, Hint of Licorice
Oak: Cocoa Powder, Tobacco
Earth/Other: Leather

The Taste
Sweetness: Off-Dry
Acidity: Med+, Peppery
Tannin: Med
Alcohol: Med+
Body: Full
Notes: Bright, Dark Berry Jam, Oak
Finish: Long

2015 was one of the most difficult farming years in our Farming history.
Farming is not for the Faint of Heart. 

One night you can go to bed knowing you have done everything you can to ensure your crop will be ready come harvest. By the next Morning, you can lose 75% of your crop by no fault of your own. 
That is what happened to us in 2015.  
The Wind Blew and The Rain fell on what was just the wrong day. 
Silently, we lost 75% of our crop while we slept. 

75%

I suggest if want to know what it takes to be a farmer you read Paul Harvey's 1978 'So God Made a Farmer' Speech.
(included to the right)
You have to be tough as nails, swallow hard and know you have to get back to work and perhaps work even harder when something likes this happens. You spend the year working, knowing full well that the results you work for, will not be there come harvest.  As we harvested the Syrah, there were some looks between father and son. Deep breaths were pulled, and the metal was set. 

We picked every single grape by hand, as we always do, and said out loud. "There isn't a lot of it. But it is some of the best looking, and best-tasting grapes, we have ever had. We didn't have a lot of it, but we were going to make the best wine we ever had out of what we did have. 
And That We Did. 
We are always precious with our crop, but this year we held it like someone in the desert holds a canteen. 
Every drop sacred. 
You see, this crop not only goes into our bottles, but it feeds our family, it feeds multiple families. We worked all year in the vineyard for that grape to hit our bottles, and we weren't going to let a drop go to waste, and we were not going to spare any expense or time, or any effort to make this the best possible wine we have ever made. 

However, we know that trying moments will happen, and we can count on it as surely sparks fly upward. 

It will happen again, 
I am sure of it. 

The truth is, the grapes spoke for themselves. 
They were in a word perfect.  
The wine, is a reflection of that perfection. 

SO GOD MADE A FARMER
- PAUL HARVEY -1978

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church. 

"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.