Brown Bags of Mystery | Keith's 50th Birthday

I never thought much about turning fifty.

Not because I was afraid of it. Quite the opposite, actually. I just never spent much time thinking I would get here. Lord knows I gave fate enough opportunities over the years. I grew up in an era before cell phones, before helicopter parents, before every bad decision was documented forever. We rode bicycles until we couldn't see home anymore. We climbed things we weren't supposed to climb, jumped things we weren't supposed to jump, rode motorcycles too fast, and generally behaved like young men who believed they had an unlimited supply of tomorrows.

If you had asked eighteen-year-old Keith Saarloos what life looked like at fifty, he probably would have laughed and told you he had no idea. He might have guessed he would be farming. He might have guessed he would still be getting into trouble. More likely he would have shrugged and said, "I don't know... I'll probably be dead by then."

The funny thing is, I wasn't.

Instead, life happened.

Not all at once. Life never arrives all at once. It arrives slowly, season by season, so gradually that you hardly notice it is happening until one day you look in the mirror and realize decades have passed. Somewhere along the way I fell in love. I got married. I became a father. I buried people I loved. I watched children become adults. I watched my parents become grandparents. I planted vineyards, harvested grapes, paid bills, worried about weather, celebrated victories, survived disappointments, and learned that most things worth having take longer than you think and cost more than you planned.

And while I was busy building a life, fifty quietly showed up.

The older I get, the less interested I become in things. That realization sneaks up on you too. When you're young, life feels like a race and every mile marker looks like something you need to acquire. A better truck. A bigger house. A little more money. A little more recognition. You spend years believing happiness is waiting just over the next hill. Then one day you find yourself standing on that hill and realize the things you were chasing were never the point at all.

I don't need a sports car.

I don't need a bigger house.

I don't need to prove anything to anybody.

I'm married to the woman of my dreams. My children are becoming the kind of people every parent hopes their children will become. I still get to call my mom every morning. I get to farm for a living. I get to make wine. I get to wake up in a place that still feels like God's country. Somewhere along the way I realized I had already won, and the funny part is that I was so busy chasing life that I almost missed it.

What I didn't realize was that while I was building a life, I was also building a cellar.

For twenty-seven years I have been farming. Some years were good. Some years were hard. Most years were both. We scraped it together. We fed kids out of the dirt. We gambled on weather, markets, water, and Mother Nature herself. There were years when everything seemed to go right and years when it felt like the entire world was conspiring against us. Through all of it we kept planting, kept harvesting, kept believing that next year might be even better.

Twenty-three vintages have come and gone since our first harvest.

Twenty-three opportunities to get it wrong.

Twenty-three opportunities to get it right.

Twenty-three opportunities to leave behind a small glass record of what life felt like at that particular moment in time.

Some of you reading this have been with us for most of that journey. You've watched my children grow up on the front of these wine labels. You've seen babies become adults, labels become traditions, and stories become part of your own family celebrations. Together we've celebrated weddings, anniversaries, retirements, promotions, new babies, and more birthdays than I can count. We've also mourned losses together. Because wine has a funny way of showing up for both the happiest and hardest moments of our lives.

That's what eventually happened to the bottles.

They stopped being inventory.

They became memories.

This bottle reminded me of a harvest.

That bottle reminded me of a friend.

Another carried the name of someone I loved.

Some were signed.

Some were sold out.

Some represented milestones in our family's story.

Every bottle became a bookmark in the story of our lives.

And because they meant something, I saved them.

This bottle was too special.

That bottle deserved a better occasion.

Maybe next year.

Maybe someday.

Maybe when the timing is right.

So they sat.

Year after year.

Waiting.

The funny thing about life is that eventually you realize that "someday" is not a day on the calendar. The perfect occasion rarely arrives announced. Most of life happens in ordinary moments. A Tuesday dinner. An old friend stopping by. A birthday. A sunset. A conversation that runs longer than expected. The things we save for later often become the things we never use at all.

I learned that lesson watching people I love leave this world.

Not one of them wished they had accumulated more.

Every one of them wished they had spent more time with the people they loved.

And that's how I arrived at the most important thing fifty has taught me.

The purpose of a thing is found in its use.

A guitar is meant to be played.

A fishing rod is meant to bend.

A truck is meant to get dirty.

A story is meant to be told.

And wine is meant to be shared.

Wine is not a museum piece.

It is not a financial instrument.

It is not a trophy.

Wine is a conversation.

Wine is laughter.

Wine is friendship.

Wine is memory.

Wine is people gathered around a table trying to make sense of this strange and beautiful life together.

For years I believed I was preserving these bottles.

Now I realize they were preserving me.

Every one of them carries a memory. A season. A harvest. A person. A moment. A piece of a life that moved faster than I realized while I was living it. But stories trapped in a cellar eventually become forgotten stories, and I have no interest in leaving behind a warehouse full of memories nobody ever got to experience.

So for my fiftieth birthday, I'm doing something that feels equal parts generous, irresponsible, and perfectly logical.

I'm opening the cellar.

The sold-out wines.

The library wines.

The signed bottles.

The magnums.

The treasures we thought were gone forever.

We're wrapping them in brown paper, mixing them together, and sending them back into the world where they belong.

Not because I need the space.

Not because I need the money.

But because stories deserve readers.

Songs deserve listeners.

And wine deserves drinkers.

After fifty years, twenty-seven years of farming, twenty-three vintages, and more blessings than I ever expected, I have finally learned something important.

I have more wine than time.

And it might as well be you drinking it.