Eight Hundred Grapes: a perfect summer escape to a sun-drenched vineyard
There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…On the eve of her wedding, Georgia Ford returns to her family’s vineyard, shaken by a devastating secret. She yearns for the rituals of harvest, the comfort of her mother’s lasagne, her brothers’ camaraderie - but the family home is rife with undercurrents. Her parents’ long marriage is revealed to be far from perfect , and her brothers, Bobby and Finn, are badly at odds.As the storm clouds gather over the vineyard’s last harvest, sibling rivalry, marriage vows and the promise of the future are strained to breaking point. Can Georgia and her family make their peace with the secrets they have hidden from each other? Georgia must also face the secret her fiance has kept from her and decide where her heart lies.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Copyright © Laura Dave 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
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Laura Dave asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780008129378
Version: 2015-07-02
J.
Without you, there probably wouldn’t be a novel …
There certainly wouldn’t be such great wine
You have to grow about eight hundred grapes to get just one bottle of wine. If that isn’t an argument to finish the bottle, I don’t know what is.
—Anonymous
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1: The Grapes
Sebastopol, California. Six months ago
The Last Straw
Regarding Henry
The Contract
The Secateurs
Sebastopol, California. 1979
Mr. McCarthy
A Guy Named Mark and a Guy Named Jesse
The Wedding Crashers
Sebastopol, California. 1984
The View from 8 A.M., the Last Sunday of the Harvest
The Wine Thief
The Ride Home
Grown, Produced, and Bottled
Part 2: The Crush
Ben and Maddie and Georgia and Jacob
Sebastopol, California. 1989
The Terroir Has a Story
The Last Family Dinner (Part 1)
Spontaneous Fermentation (and Other Ways to Lose the Love of Your Life)
Sebastopol, California. 1994
The Last Family Dinner (Part 2)
Exile on Main Street
The Vintner Drinks Alone
Pancakes at The Violet Café
Perfect Red
Sebastopol, California. 1999
Home
The History of Wine
Note by Note
Falling Out of Sync
No Secrets
Part 3: The Union
An Invitation
People Who Screw Up
High Yields
The Starkville City Jail
The Wine Cave
Sebastopol, California. 2004
Have-to-Have
The Harvest Party
A Few Good Men
The Defrosting
Synchronization
Part 4: The Last Harvest
The Waiting Room
Sebastopol, California. 2009
The Details
The First Contract
The Other Line
Everything Worth Doing
The Wedding
Part 5: An Unnamed Vineyard
Sebastopol, California. Present day
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Laura Dave
About the Publisher
My father has this great story about the day he met my mother, a story he never gets sick of telling. It was a snowy December morning and he was hurrying into his co-worker’s yellow Volkswagen bug parked in front of Lincoln Center, holding two cups of coffee and a massive slew of newspapers. (His first wine, Block 14—the only wine in his very first vintage—had gotten a small mention in the Wall Street Journal.) And between the excitement of the article and the steaming coffee, Daniel Bradley Ford didn’t notice that there were two yellow bugs parked in front of Lincoln Center. That his East Coast distributor was not the one huddling for warmth in the yellow bug’s driver’s seat. But, instead, his future wife, Jenny.
He had gotten into the wrong car to find the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen, wearing blue mittens and a matching beret. Her long, blond curls seeping out from beneath. Her cello taking up the whole backseat.
The legend goes—and knowing my parents I almost believe it—that my mother didn’t scream. She didn’t ask who my father was or what he was doing in her car. She offered one of her magical smiles and said, “I was wondering what took you so long.”
Then she reached out her hand for the cup of coffee he was ready to give her.
Synchronization, my father would say. This was a very big word for him. Synchronization: The coordination of events to operate in union. A conductor managing to keep his orchestra in time. The impossible meeting of light reflection and time exposure that leads to a perfect photograph. Two yellow bugs parked in front of Lincoln Center at the same time, the love of your life in one of them.
