Love Under the Olive Tree

In the agricultural region of Sunset Valley, California, Frank Cabella and Raphael Brandini were once business partners in an olive growing and oil making ranch, but they long ago had a falling out leading to they subdividing the ranch, each getting one half. Frank has just retired, passing the Cabella Ranch to his granddaughter, Nicole Cabella, who has long worked the land alongside her grandfather. With her platonic best friend and ranch hand Adam Caulfield, Nicole, while still doing things the old fashioned way unlike Brandini's modernized way in focusing on the bottom line, plans to increase the customer side of the business by expanding the existing tasting and demonstration area. However, the only land into where Nicole can expand feasibly is contested, not by Raphael, but rather a San Francisco corporate lawyer: Jake Brandini, Raphael's grandson, who only wants to do right for his family. Without either of their families knowing, Jake, who used to spend summers on the Brandini ranch but who had no interest in learning the business in being a city boy, and Nicole hung out together those summers meeting at the fence separating the two properties, their friendship stemming from their friendly competition. In neither Nicole or Jake backing down, Judge Monroe, who is hearing the case, suggests, rather than go through the time consuming process of finding the old official records, to settle the dispute through the unconventional method of the winner of this year's imminent Sunset Valley Annual Fall Festival's olive oil making competition taking possession of that land, with Brandini having won the last three years. What used to be Nicole and Jake's friendly competitive nature becomes unfriendly in almost every encounter they have as Jake has decided to remain at the family ranch until the festival and the olive oil judging. As Nicole and Jake spend more and more time together, their animosity starts to soften to the point that they may not only come to resolution to the family feud and thus the land dispute but that they fall for each other. It may all be for naught in a misunderstanding, similar to one that happened fifteen years ago which led to Jake no longer coming to the ranch after that time.