Eight Hundred Grapes (12)

That was a world Dan had only visited, a world still rejoicing from their win in the Judgment of Paris a few years earlier. The victory had been a big deal in the wine world. Eleven judges, graded tastings, California wines rating best in each category. Beating out the French, beating out the world. A French judge had demanded her ballot back, but it was too late. She had already spoken. Napa Valley was the winner.

Sebastopol wasn’t Napa Valley. It wasn’t obvious for growing grapes—this wedge-shaped hunk of land separating the Russian River Valley from the Petaluma Gap, all sloping land and overgrown trees, winding roads like obstacle courses.

This was Western Sonoma County. It was rolling country, a land of apple orchards. This very acreage had been an apple orchard, the real estate agent told him. Now it was dehydrated, empty.

But he wasn’t only looking at the land. He was looking at the rest of it. Sebastopol’s prevalent but predictable weather patterns. Mornings always warm, especially when the fog burned off. Evenings always cold. The elevation here keeping the land above the coastal fog.

He had been a scientist by trade until he felt compelled to do something else, until he felt he had to be standing here. He had been standing on the top of the hill—the high point that looked over the acres—every morning this week. He had been standing here for two hours at a time, as he clocked how the sun came up, how the wind felt. He thought he could work with this. And, if he managed, he would be the first to succeed.

He would have to try. He couldn’t afford a piece of land in Napa Valley. He could barely afford this land, in the middle of nowhere. But that wasn’t the only reason. Maybe if he honored the land—if he honored the elements that made it the strange and unique way it was—he could make a different type of wine. He could do something worth doing.

The real estate agent was trying to be patient. She had been standing on the top of the hill with him every morning this week, standing over him as he reached down, his hands grabbing soil, studying it.

He knew if she had any other potential buyers, she wouldn’t be here. She knew that he knew this.

He tried to ignore her, but she followed his eyes out to the empty land. She looked at his empty ring finger.

“Are you going to build a home here?” she asked.

“A vineyard.”

“Really?” She tried to recover. She did a terrible job. “Very exciting!”

He was looking straight ahead.

“Are you a winemaker?”

“No.”

She looked at him, perplexed. “Do you have someone to help you?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

He was twenty-five years old. He had no family, no money, two classes so far in viticulture. Fourteen more classes to go.

He had no business doing what he was about to do.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

And he looked out at nothing. The beginning of his life.





Mr. McCarthy




After we left the vineyard, I went back to the house and showered. When I got out, I checked my phone for the first time that day.

There were two messages from Suzannah in my office. Suzannah Calvin-Bernardi (Savannah-born, former homecoming queen, current spitfire), who in addition to being a co-associate at my law firm was one of my best friends in Los Angeles. She managed to make it all seem easy. She was raising a child and eight months pregnant with a second (both with her homecoming king), kicking all kinds of ass at work. Taking no bullshit from any of them. Her kid, her colleagues. Herself.

But in my attempt to get out of town as quickly as possible, I’d done something unlike myself. I’d saddled her with the case we were currently trying to close. I never saddled her with anything—never left a deal unsigned, worked late into the night so that she didn’t have to—-especially now that she was pregnant. Which made me scared to listen to her message. Her tone firm and fast.

“Hey . . . this is work Suzannah. Remember when you were stepping out of the office for your dress fitting? Call me when you get this. I hate you.”

Then there was Suzannah’s second message. Her tone soft and melodic.

“Hey . . . this is friend Suzannah. Remember when you were stepping out of the office for your dress fitting? Call me when you get this. I love you.”

As I clicked over to phone her back, I got another call. I thought it was going to be Ben—who had left several messages of his own. But it was Thomas Nick, Ben’s business partner.

Thomas was in London, setting up the office. He wanted everything to be up and running by the time he flew to the States for our wedding.

“Georgia,” he said. “How’s the move going?”

The move. I sat down on the edge of my bed and wrapped the towel more tightly around myself. Ben and I were moving today. In the chaos, I hadn’t even considered that. All of our stuff was leaving our house in Silver Lake, heading in a van and then a plane to our new home in London, on the edge of Notting Hill. It was my dream house, situated on a pretty cobbled mews near Westbourne Grove, arguably the coolest street in London. The house was a knockout. It had lovely natural light, white bookshelves lining the living room, large windows throughout the kitchen. And maybe the greatest thing of all was the front door, a red door, reminding me of my parents’ door.

“I’m standing in the town house now. It’s lovely. Lovely but empty. You’ll need to come in here and make it homey. It needs the Georgia touch, if you know what I’m saying.”