Toast to Italy

Clare Travalino is preparing to marry Luke in New York, and her sisters Jenny and Lara help with the final wedding details. The family tradition requires a toast with 1968 Farazelli Rosso, a wine believed to bless true love and curse marriages that omit it. The family bottle is empty, so Jenny, a hardworking radiologist, impulsively takes on the mission of finding another bottle before the wedding. She arranges for colleagues to cover her patients and flies to Rome after learning that one bottle is being auctioned there. At the Rome auction, Jenny meets Arrigo Vickers, an English journalist writing about the legendary wine for a magazine contest. They discover that they are competing for the same bottle, but neither wins because wealthy collector Salvatore Vento outbids them. Jenny follows a wine dealer’s lead to Orvieto, where she reconnects with distant Travalino relatives and learns that her grandparents originally owned the vineyard that produced the wine. The family points her toward Marcello Segato, a former sommelier who once championed the wine and may have retained some of the last bottles. Arrigo continues appearing wherever Jenny goes, first as an apparent rival and then as an unexpected travel companion. They share train rides, meals, sightseeing, wine tastings, and a night in a hotel with only one room available. As Arrigo teaches Jenny about Italian wine and she reveals the personal reasons behind her career in radiology, their rivalry becomes mutual attraction. They also bond over failed engagements and complicated relationships with their families. Their growing trust is threatened when Jenny overhears Arrigo discussing pressure from his editor to turn her family story into a sensational cover story, but Arrigo explains that he is genuinely falling for her and does not want to exploit her. The pair eventually find Jenny’s great-aunt, who explains that Marcello was once her true love before family pressure led her to marry someone else. Jenny and Arrigo follow another lead to Marcello’s home, where he reveals that a warehouse fire destroyed nearly all of his Farazelli Rosso. He has only one bottle left, which he has preserved for the woman he never stopped loving. Rather than take it for Clare’s wedding, Jenny urges Marcello to reunite with her great-aunt, deciding that their long-delayed love matters more than the bottle or her own mission. Jenny returns to Rome without the wine, believing she will miss the wedding and that her romance with Arrigo is over. While Jenny flies home, Arrigo’s editor negotiates with Salvatore, who agrees to donate his auction bottle to the magazine contest. Arrigo also discovers another bottle of the exact vintage and races to New York. He arrives at Clare and Luke’s wedding with the wine, explaining that the pursuit of it has brought new love together. Jenny and Arrigo reunite, and the family toasts the newlyweds as the wine’s legend appears to have guided Jenny toward both her Italian roots and her own chance at lasting love.