HONOR BRADY falls in love with wine merchant Hugo Lambert and moves to Astignac, a village in the French wine region Entre Deux Mers. Hugo sells rare wines to connossieurs; wines with a story; wines hidden during the war; wines rescued from the Winter Palace in St Petersburg ...MELANIE MILLER, an American student, discovers that the grandfather who raised her, fathered a child in Astignac during the war. She sets out to find the relatives she never knew she had. IVOR KITCHOFF, an American of Russian descent, wants to own one of the precious Romanoff bottles. But other, less salubrious Russians, are equally interested ...All of these characters have their own reasons for coming to Astignac. But they share one thing in common: the need to know what is real and what is false. In love as well as wine.