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SOULMATES ARE NOT FOUND,
THEY ARE FORGED
They didn’t know yet how good it would get.
I look at this photo and I can feel it—something simple and certain sitting between them. My dad just behind her, close enough to say I’ve got you without saying a word. My mom out in front, smiling like she already decided this life was going to be a good one—and she was bringing him with her.
There’s a lightness to it. A quiet kind of joy.
They look like two people at the very beginning of a long road, not worried about where it leads—just sure they’re walking it together.
And I know what came next.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was full. Full of laughter that carried through the house. Full of long dinners that turned into longer conversations. Full of kids—us—learning what love looks like by watching it, not being told. It was built in the everyday. In showing up. In choosing each other again and again, even when it would’ve been easier not to.
That’s what I see when I look at this.
Not just who they were then…
But everything they became.
A life built side by side. A partnership that grew deeper, stronger, more rooted with every passing year. The kind of love that doesn’t just last—it multiplies. It spills over into children, into community, into a way of living that carries on long after.
Soulmates are not found.
They are forged.
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To read the rest of the story, see below.
THE STORY
The people came first. The stories came first. The love came first. The wine came later.
My Mom and Dad met in high school, just kids really, still becoming who they were going to be, and my Dad asked my Mom out and then had to wait six weeks because her dance card was already full. Six weeks. That tells you a lot about Linda Saarloos. She was the “It Girl” then, and she still is now. Four varsity sports all four years. Cheerleader. CIF Woman of the Year. Beautiful in the way people notice when she enters a room, but that’s not even the true measure of her. The true measure is that she is the kindest person I have ever known, the most naturally gifted, the easiest to love, the sort of person who makes people feel better just by being near her. And if I am being honest, I am probably still underselling her.
My Dad waited the six weeks. He didn’t blink. He didn’t drift. He waited. Then one day my Mom walked past him in the hallway and said, “We have a date this week.” And my Dad said, “Yes we do.” After that first date he came home and told his parents, “She’s it. I think Linda is the one.” One date, and he knew.
People call that soulmates. Like it was found. Like it was luck. Like it was written in the stars and all they had to do was bump into it. But if you watched their life the way my brother and I did, if you had front row seats not to a moment but to a marriage, you would say something else.
Soulmates are not found. They are forged.
They were a team. A real one. They picked each other up. They had each other’s backs. They did not argue to win. They argued for the best answer. They won together and they lost together. My Dad became the best version of himself because he had the love of a truly exceptional human being standing beside him, and he knew it. He was grateful for her. He loved her completely. And my Mom, who could have been anything she wanted, who could have gone anywhere and done anything and been extraordinary at all of it, chose him. Chose her teammate. Chose the life they would build together.
Then they forged their soulmate.
They were each remarkable on their own, but the combination of the two of them was something stronger than either could have been alone. A marriage where each tried to give sixty and only take forty. A life where they were put in the fire again and again and came out stronger because they never stopped fighting for the best in each other. They always said there are no failures, only new opportunities to succeed. They were both athletes at heart. They played the game to win, and they played it to the last out. My Mom always says she likes to watch games “to see them try their best.” It was never only about winning or losing. It was about effort. Heart. Character. The willingness to stay in it and keep going.
That is the example my brother and I grew up with. We watched it every day. And somehow both of us followed in our father’s footsteps and married way above ourselves. Both of us said the same thing after the first date: “She’s it.” That probably is not an accident. We knew what to look for because we had seen what it looked like when it was real.
People sometimes think we name our wines after people because it is clever marketing. It isn’t. We do it because it is true. The wine is not the point. The people are. The bottles are not trophies. They are reminders. They are stories you can hold in your hand. They are little time machines that take you back to a table, a porch, a kitchen, a summer night, a laugh, a hard conversation, a victory, a setback, a moment where someone you love looked at you and you remembered what matters.
That is why every spring we release what we call the Family Allocation. These wines usually never see the bar, because they were never made for the public. They were made for the family. For the people who have been with us, who understand what we are trying to build out here, and who open bottles the way we do: with intention, with gratitude, and with other human beings nearby.
This bottle belongs in that story.
They are forged.
THE WINE
SOULMATES didn’t begin as a blend so much as it began as two separate lives, growing under the same sky but in different ways. One rooted in Windmill Ranch, where the Syrah leans into the elements, a little more exposed, a little more willing to carry what the land gives it. The other in El Camino Real, where the Cabernet settles deeper, steadier, shaped by a different rhythm, a different kind of patience. Same valley, same sun, but not the same path. And that matters, because the things that last are rarely made from sameness.
Nothing about this wine was rushed. It couldn’t be. Out here, if you try to hurry something, it shows. It comes apart. But if you stay with it—if you walk the rows, if you pay attention, if you let the seasons do their quiet work—something begins to take shape that you couldn’t have forced into existence. The kind of thing that carries time inside of it. The kind of thing that feels whole not because it was perfected, but because it was allowed to become.
The Syrah comes forward open and generous, carrying dark fruit and a kind of warmth that doesn’t hold back. The Cabernet answers with a different voice, more structured, more grounded, bringing a quiet strength that knows how to hold its line. On their own, they don’t need each other. They are complete as they are. And that’s exactly why, when they come together, it isn’t about fixing anything or filling a gap. It’s about building something larger by staying connected, by learning how to move in the same direction without losing what made them strong to begin with.
Two wines, one soul.
Not because they became the same, but because they chose to hold together.
Like a marriage that isn’t built on ease, but on the decision to remain. Through change. Through time. Through everything that tests it and shapes it and, if it holds, strengthens it.
This wine doesn’t ask to be noticed. It doesn’t need to. It carries itself the way something real always does—steady, grounded, and present in a way that doesn’t fade when the moment passes. It stays.
THE NOTES
It doesn’t rush to introduce itself, and that’s the first thing you notice. It opens slowly, the way something honest always does, letting dark fruit come forward first—blackberry, cassis, black plum—familiar, but carrying more depth than it lets on at first. It settles in before it fully speaks, and as it does, the lower tones begin to rise—cocoa, cedar, a touch of dust, a bit of earth—the kind of quiet complexity that reminds you this came from somewhere real, somewhere worked, somewhere lived in.
There’s weight here, but it doesn’t lean on you. The Syrah stretches outward, giving it texture and warmth, while the Cabernet draws it back in, giving it structure and purpose, and together they hold in a way that feels natural, unforced, complete. Nothing competes, nothing pushes, nothing tries to prove anything. It simply exists as it is, balanced and steady.
And then it stays.
That’s the part you carry with you. Not the first impression, but what lingers after. The way it settles into the moment and doesn’t rush out of it, like a conversation that keeps going because no one is ready for it to end.
THE WHY
We didn’t make this wine to explain anything. We made it because we’ve lived inside something that mattered, and we didn’t want to let it pass without marking it in some way that could be held onto.
Larry and Linda Saarloos didn’t build a life that anyone would call perfect, but they built one that was real, and that’s harder to do. It wasn’t made in big moments or loud declarations, but in the quiet accumulation of days, in the small decisions that didn’t seem like much at the time but, over years, became something unbreakable. They didn’t find love and hold onto it. They built it. They stayed in it. They chose it, again and again, long after the first feeling would have been enough for most people.
That’s what we grew up watching, even before we understood it. Not perfection, but commitment. Not something easy, but something worth it. The kind of love that doesn’t disappear when it’s tested, but becomes something stronger because it was.
That stays with you.
It shapes how you see things. It shapes what you look for. It shapes what you’re willing to fight for and what you’re not willing to walk away from.
This bottle is just our way of saying we saw it, and it mattered enough to carry forward.
Not polished. Not perfect.
Just true.
THE PAIRING
This isn’t a wine for a moment you’re trying to get through. It belongs to time that you’re willing to give away without watching the clock, to a table that doesn’t need to be cleared too quickly, to a night that stretches out because no one is ready for it to end. It belongs with food that took effort, something cooked slowly, something that had to sit in its own heat long enough to become what it was meant to be.
But more than anything, it belongs with people.
The ones who know your story without needing the short version, who have seen you at your best and your worst and stayed anyway, who don’t need a reason to pour another glass or stay another hour. The ones who understand that the best moments aren’t planned, they’re allowed to happen.
This isn’t about the occasion.
It’s about the company.
About staying a little longer.
About letting something real take shape while you’re not trying to force it.About letting the moment become something you’ll remember later.
FINAL WORD
If you’ve lived long enough, you already know the difference between what’s easy and what lasts.
The best things don’t just happen.
They’re built.
They’re chosen.
They’re held onto when it would be easier to let go.
And if you’re lucky…
they stay.
Soulmates are not found.
They are forged.
