Eight Hundred Grapes

Georgia decides to sneak into her family’s house. While she is doing her best to be quiet, Ben, her fiancé, calls and asks to talk. Ten hours earlier, Georgia had her final wedding dress fitting and spied her husband walking down the street with a woman and a child, looking intimate. When she dashed across the street to confront him, Ben revealed that the child, Maddie, is his—a fact Ben had never told her. Georgia hangs up on Ben and goes to sleep in her childhood bedroom. On the upper floor of the house, however, she discovers a naked man, Henry Morgan, leaving her parents’ bedroom, where her mother, Jen, is inside.

When Henry leaves, her mother explains that she is taking time apart from Georgia’s father, Dan—though not necessarily because of Henry—and intended to tell Georgia after her wedding to Ben. Jen avoids giving more details on the situation and instead intimates that there are also issues between Bobby and Finn. She asks why Georgia has suddenly come to their home in the middle of the night, two weeks earlier than expected. She asks if Ben did something unforgivable to Georgia, and Georgia reveals that Ben has a daughter. Her mother has an unexpected reaction; she tells Georgia that perhaps she should be lenient and that things could be more complicated than she currently understands, much like Jen’s own life. Georgia feels unsupported by her mother and heads to bed.

The next morning, Georgia goes to find her father in their vineyard. She recalls her love for the vineyard and how, until the age of 14, she’d wanted to take it over and continue the family legacy. However, after the financial insecurity caused by two bad harvest seasons, she’d grown determined to find a stable career that would take her away from Sebastopol. She enters the winemaker’s cottage on their land and finds contracts for an ownership transfer of their family vineyard, The Last Straw, to Murray Grant Wines, an international wine company that has a reputation for privileging profits over quality. Georgia is devastated. When Bobby enters the cottage, he explains that the offer that Jacob McCarthy, CEO of Murray Grant Wines, made their father was generous. He suggests that selling the vineyard would allow their father to relax. Georgia and Bobby fight, and when her father eventually enters the cottage, he tries to comfort Georgia.

Georgia helps her father to gather ripe grapes from the vine as he explains that selling the vineyard is what’s best for the family. They discuss Jacob, his genealogy, and how he will take care of the vineyard in the same way that Dan did, which Georgia doesn’t believe. When she argues that selling while separated from Jen is ill-advised, her father leaves, and Bobby berates her for her lack of tact. The topic changes, and Georgia asks about the issue that Bobby has with Finn. Bobby doesn’t quite know the problem, despite how close the brothers are, and attributes it to his harsh judgment on all the women whom Finn dates. Ben calls Bobby, and Bobby tries to give the phone to Georgia, who promptly ends the call before talking to Ben. Neither Ben nor Georgia tell Bobby about Ben’s daughter, Maddie.

The narrative goes back to 1979, when Dan Ford is young and considering whether he should purchase land in Western Sonoma County, specifically Sebastopol. He has been visiting the same land with a real estate agent for several days, and though he feels trepidation about growing a vineyard in an untested area, he is ultimately hopeful and determined and decides to buy the 10 acres on offer.

Georgia wakes up to several phone calls, two of which she missed from her best friend and coworker, Suzannah. The third call is from Ben’s business partner, Thomas, who reminds her that all of her belongings are moving to London that day—a new home she is meant to share with Ben. She leaves the vineyard to find Jacob McCarthy at his offices and is surprised to find them unostentatious. When they meet, Jacob mentions that he’s seen her at the Brothers’ Tavern in her wedding dress. He asks whether she walked out on her wedding. When she denies it, he recounts how he himself was jilted at the altar. She confronts him about the sale, and while he tries to charm her, it’s made clear that he has no intention of rescinding the agreement that he has with her father.

When Georgia returns, Finn is eating their mother’s lasagna. He has been bribed to return home so that Jen won’t have to be alone with Georgia. They discuss Henry, their parents’ troubled relationship, and the sale contract for The Last Straw. Georgia is still incensed, but Finn believes that they shouldn’t get involved. When Georgia demands to know why no one asked her about the sale, he reminds her that in her second year of law school, she’d made Finn and Bobby sign a contract that stipulated that all three of them would abstain from taking over the vineyard. She then asks him why he and Bobby aren’t getting along. Finn explains that he and Margaret, Bobby’s wife, have feelings for one another. Just as he denies sleeping with her to Georgia, Bobby walks into the kitchen. Seemingly, he has not overheard them. Margaret follows him into the kitchen with their twin boys shortly after. Georgia notices the tension between her and Finn just as Finn decides to leave and everyone else awkwardly disperses.

The narrative goes back in time to the night before Bobby’s wedding to Margaret. Finn threw a bachelor party for Bobby, but now only Finn, Bobby, and Georgia remain at the bar. Bobby wants to keep partying, and while heavily inebriated, the three of them slip into an unknown wedding reception. They manage to mingle well with the people until Bobby starts talking to the bride. He comments on her age, and the bride misunderstands that he is calling her old. A fight erupts, and Finn protects Bobby, who runs away with Georgia. The cops arrest Finn before Bobby and Georgia can go back for him.

Back in the present, Georgia reminisces about that night to try and understand the current issues in her brothers’ relationship. When Ben calls, she decides to answer, and they broach the topic of his child. He tells her that Maddie is the daughter of Michelle Carter, a famous actress whom he briefly dated a few months before her and who “eviscerated him” when she left him. He reveals that he was made aware of Maddie’s existence five days after proposing to Georgia, but he wants to get past this mistake. Georgia hangs up instead.

She finds her mother in her bedroom, and Jen informs her that Jacob contacted her father about her visit. Georgia explains that she cannot, in good conscience, leave her father to sell the vineyard under duress. When her mother protests that he is not under duress, Georgia argues that Henry’s presence says otherwise, and per Jen’s own teaching when they were children, Georgia shouldn’t sit around while the people whom she loves make mistakes.

The narrative pivots to 1984, when all three children are born and the vineyard has gone through bad harvests, leaving the Fords close to ruin. Dan ruminates on solutions, and when Jen comes in with baby Georgia, he announces that they need to sell the vineyard and move to San Francisco, where he would reclaim his professorship. Jen asks who he called with this plan so that she can call them back and tell them they aren’t going anywhere; they are keeping the vineyard.

In the present, Finn and Dan wake up Georgia by drenching her with water. The three of them go to The Tasting Room, and on the way there, her father asks about the situation with Ben and whether Georgia has doubts about marrying him. She confirms that she does, and her father tells her of the near-marriage he had prior to meeting her mother. He rectifies the myth of where the name for the vineyard came from: not a midnight jaunt in a bar, but from his ex-girlfriend, who called his passion for wine the last straw of their relationship. He tells Georgia that while it’s all right to give value to the life that she imagined with Ben, it’s equally admissible to value the doubts that she has about him.

In The Tasting Room, a group of local winemakers called the Cork Dorks (which includes Dan) gather to taste Dan’s vintage from last year’s harvest. Bobby, Jen, and Jacob also join in on the tasting. Speeches are made, and Dan comments on how arduous and volatile the process of turning 800 grapes into a bottle of wine can be. He thanks them all for the run that he’s had making wine beside them. While everyone looks on happily, Georgia drops her glass. It shatters, and she leaves The Tasting Room in a hurry.

Jacob finds Georgia outside and offers to drive her home. Jen comes to find her as well, but Georgia sees Henry waiting for her mother and decides to accept Jacob’s offer. They start walking to his home, which is seven miles away.

As Jacob and Georgia walk toward his home, they agree to a temporary truce. They talk about Sebastopol and the differences between growing up in Sebastopol and New York. As they discuss Georgia’s possible relocation to London, she considers what, in fact, pushes her to practice law (practicality over passion) and whether she is happy in her life. Jacob explains what happened at his botched wedding. He reveals that, despite not being married, he and his girlfriend are still together, though they still have issues since she does not like living in Sonoma County. He mentions that he worries that Dan is delaying picking his most prized grapes for too long because the weather has been dry and a storm is most likely imminent. When they reach Georgia’s family home, Ben and Maddie are waiting for her on the doorstep.