Eight Hundred Grapes: a perfect summer escape to a sun-drenched vineyard

Mr. McCarthy (#ulink_7ce2a21b-a45c-55b0-b610-5d82d5bfef4f)

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.”

Thomas was just being nice. Ben was the one who made things beautiful. He could take any room and turn it into a place no one wanted to leave. When he moved to Los Angeles, he moved our bed to the back room. It was a library that wasn’t supposed to be a bedroom, but he knew how good it’d feel to wake up under the large bay window. Was it yesterday that I’d woken up there beside him? My heart hurt, thinking of it.

“Thomas, I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“Sure thing, but I’m actually just trying to reach Ben. We have an issue with the Marlborough Project. I need a quick answer from him so I can handle it,” he said. “Is he with you?”

“No.”

He paused, my short answer confusing him. “Okay, do you have any idea where Ben might be?”

“Did you try the mother of his child?” I said. “Maybe he’s with her?”

“The mother of his child?” he said.

The world slowed down to a crawl, hearing him repeat those words. And I realized how deranged I sounded.

Still, instead of explaining, I hung up the phone.

I always understood how deeply my father loved the vineyard, but I experienced it firsthand when my mother took Finn and Bobby to visit her parents, and I spent the week at home with my father. In biodynamic winemaking, you plant and root based on the position of the moon and the stars, and that week, I learned what that involved. I couldn’t have been older than five, but he woke me at midnight and handed me a cup of hot chocolate, and I followed him as he planted and sowed and rooted. He was so focused on each and every step—as if what he did, what he didn’t manage to do, was going to change everything. I had never seen anyone concentrate like that on anything. It was like watching love.

I threw on a T-shirt and jeans and got into my car. I headed down CA-116—the winding road that would take me from one world to the other, from Sonoma into the heart of Napa Valley.

Napa had the fixings of a big city. It had entertainment, fancy hotels. Fancier restaurants.

For my twenty-first birthday, I’d come home from college so the five of us could have lunch at the fanciest restaurant—up the road in Yountville. The French Laundry: named after the actual French laundry that had occupied the countryside house before the restaurant did. This restaurant, among the best in the world, served you nine courses and the best wine you’d ever tasted. We weren’t just celebrating my birthday, that day. The French Laundry had recently added my father’s wine to their extensive wine list. Block 14. Estate Pinot Noir. 1992. My father’s favorite Pinot. It was still grown exclusively on those initial ten acres, and we were giddy seeing it on the menu, knowing people from all over the world would be drinking it. For two hundred and fifty dollars a bottle. My father ordered two bottles in the hopes it would help it stay on the menu.

As I passed The French Laundry, I shifted back to that special afternoon. Bobby had announced that he was going to ask Margaret to marry him. Finn had screamed that no matter how beautiful she was, he was crazy to get married when he was barely able to legally rent a car. Bobby then announced that Margaret was pregnant. The two bottles of wine hadn’t helped anything.

Ben and I planned to take my family to the restaurant as a thank-you to my parents for hosting our wedding at their home. Was that one more thing that wasn’t happening? First the thank-you meal, then the wedding?

I took a left off of Washington Street onto the side street housing Murray Grant Wines, parking in one of only two spaces available out front next to an old Honda.

I looked at the contract I’d swiped from the winemaker’s cottage to make certain I was at the correct address. It didn’t feel like I was. That was the thing about wine country in Northern California. It was a small world, but with two distinct factions. There was rural and peaceful Sonoma County in one corner, commercial Napa Valley in the other. Some would argue that the divide was diminishing—Sonoma County was industrializing their wine, the same way Napa Valley had, decades earlier. For now, the divide still existed, small Sonoma producers still the David to the Goliath of corporate conglomerates like Murray Grant.

But, surprisingly, the offices of Murray Grant Wines were hardly an evil, intimidating complex. This place looked as though it belonged in Sebastopol: the hidden second story at the back of a small courtyard, with vines lining the staircase, and red, yellow, and orange plants in every window. Bright green shutters. It looked less like a corporate office and more like an artist’s apartment.

I knocked on the screen door, to which I got a distant reply of, “It’s open.”

I walked into the waiting area, which had no chairs, no sofa, just an empty receptionist desk, and a very nice painting of a pear behind it. For some reason, I kept staring at it. The pear. Its bright green hue pulled me in, slightly magical.

“It’s mesmerizing, right?”

I turned to see a man in the doorway of the office, looking at the pear with his head tilted to one side. He was wearing jeans and one of those zipper cashmere sweaters with a tie sticking out from beneath it. He was good-looking, in a way, but nowhere near as good-looking as he thought he was, standing there in that brazen East Coast way that reminded me of some guys I’d met at law school. The Masters of the Universe guys. This guy carried their vibe. Brandishing a half smile.

“I haven’t been able to figure out what it is about the painting, exactly. And I’ve tried,” he said. “At first I thought it was because my mother painted it, but everyone seems to focus on it. So it must be something. There must be something there.”

He turned from the painting and we made eye contact for the first time.

“It’s you,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“The bride. From the bar.”

That threw me. I looked at him, confused.

“I almost didn’t recognize you because your hair was up in that bun.” He paused. “Falling out of that bun …”

I reached up and touched my hair, which now cascaded over my shoulders, moving from its Los Angeles straight toward Sonoma curly. “What are you saying, exactly?”

He cocked his head. “It looks much better like this.”

He motioned toward the top of his head—his own thick hair—as if he were waiting for me to return the compliment. Instead, I pulled on my T-shirt, wishing I had worn something more lawyerly. He didn’t seem to notice, though. He was still stuck on my wedding dress.

“I was there when you came in last night at the small table by the fireplace …”

He made a triangle sign with his hand, trying to demonstrate. He pointed to the index finger to show where I was, and the opposite thumb to indicate himself.

“You know what? Reverse that. I was there with my girlfriend. She was talking about chia. She loves chia. She puts it on everything. Salad. Oatmeal. Pasta. Apparently it’s good for you. Did you know that?”

I nodded, slimy chia a staple at trendy Los Angeles restaurants. Still, this was not the way I wanted this conversation to start. This guy, somehow, in control.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to try the chia, so I was looking around the bar, and then you appeared. And now you’re here. That’s so weird. Don’t you think that’s so weird?”

“No,” I said.