Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

What a fabulous story this was! I devoured this book in one evening like a bottle of wine with a good friend. Actually, the story takes place on a vineyard in Sonoma County, California, so it really did give me the taste for a great glass of vino. A week before her wedding to brilliant and heart-stoppingly handsome architect, Ben, Georgia Ford leaves her life and job as a lawyer in the city and heads home to her family’s vineyard, The Last Straw Vineyard, in Sebastopol, California. She expects to get home and seek comfort of her older twin brothers Bobby and Finn, as well as her happily married parents. However, when she arrives home running from secrets Ben had been keeping from her, she realizes that there were even more secrets being kept from her by the family. The romantic scenes are sweet and not too overdone. The descriptions of the vineyard and of winemaking is beautifully done. One of the neatest things I found was that The Last Straw Vineyard is a small biodynamic vineyard which holds its own up against the large commercial vineyards in Sonoma County and Napa Valley. Georgia’s father Dan, the head winemaker, doesn’t add anything to the grapes to make wine, he lets the grapes make themselves into wine. It’s all about the different vegetables and flowers that are composted into the soil to make rich, robust grapes which will turn into wonderful vintages. Let’s just say that this book caused me to appreciate wine and all eight hundred grapes that go into the making of every bottle. I would highly recommend this book because I absolutely loved it.