Two mismatched lives. One chaotic harvest. A vintage in the making.

Jacques is a meticulous, deeply rigid French ex-banker whose high-flying London career has recently evaporated. Currently excelling at dignified existential dread, his mourning is interrupted by his friend and neighbour, Harry—a boisterous, unapologetic American whose idea of a cure involves unforgiving neon Lycra, pungent cheese, and a gruelling bicycle "wine odyssey" across the South Downs.

The English countryside isn't ready for them. And they certainly aren't ready for Sarah.

Fiercely capable and permanently dust gilded, Sarah is fighting a back-breaking battle to save her family’s Sussex vineyard. Between dodging a hostile health and safety inspector and managing her cheerfully eccentric father, she has absolutely no time for urban "tourists." She especially doesn't have time for two bumbling Londoners who have crashed into her life.

But as the high-stakes autumn harvest approaches and the chaos of English viticulture takes hold, an unexpected alchemy begins to bubble. Armed with nothing but a childhood informal learning of viticulture and a high tolerance for humiliation, Jacques must decide if he’s brave enough to trade his perfectly tailored past for a future stained with grapes and deeply rooted in the Sussex soil.

Warm, witty, and quintessentially British, Life in Fermentation is a sparkling romantic comedy about cultural collisions, catastrophic bike rides and discovering that the most perfect vintages often come from the messiest harvests.