Dragonvine: Vine | Wine | Elixir

by Steven Laine

When his father dies in a wildfire, Carmine Cooper takes over the family winery in the middle of harvest, putting his dreams of becoming an architect on hold. He soon finds himself fighting with a vengeful neighbor, blackmailed by a local gang, harassed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities, and the target of an ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives) investigation. Carmine’s only hope to solve his problems and finish his first solo vintage successfully rests in identifying an unknown grape variety his father grew and made into wine for a quarter century with links to an ancient Chinese grape variety and the First Emperor of China. Can Carmine save his father’s legacy, his family, the winery, and his first harvest before it’s too late?

404 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2022

About the author

Steve is a French, Italian, Spanish and Canadian Wine Scholar, the only North American invited to join the Champagne Academy in France and is a member of International Thriller Writers. He has visited hundreds of wineries in the world's major wine regions.

During the pandemic, he worked the 2020 harvest to learn the winemaking process firsthand from the winemakers at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery in British Columbia. In 2021, he worked at Trius Winery in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario where he put his winemaking and forklift-driving skills to use once again as a cellarman.

Kirkus Reviews called Steven Laine's first wine thriller, Root Cause, “An entertaining, wine-soaked mystery.” The Washington Post wrote; “If Michael Pollan and Dan Brown sat down over a bottle of Barolo and brainstormed a novel based on the neuroses of the natural wine movement, they might have come up with something like ‘Root Cause’.”