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• by:
• Crosby, Ellen

It's been exactly a year since Lucie Montgomery took over the operation of her family vineyard at the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Now she is swept into a mystery that begins with a journey Thomas Jefferson made through the wine regions of France and ends with a murder at Montgomery Estate Vineyard.

The story opens at Mount Vernon, George Washington's home, where Lucie attends a lecture on the wines owned by the first president. When the lecturer turns up dead the next morning, Lucie suspects her murder is related to the authenticity of a bottle of Bordeaux Jefferson supposedly purchased for Washington in 1790--a bottle that is to be auctioned at a charity fundraiser.

As Lucie pursues the truth about the Washington wine, her beloved French grandfather comes to visit. His link to the vineyards of France helps Lucie unravel the secrets of a long forgotten wine scandal involving fraud and betrayel. As Lucie and her eccentric winemaker Quinn Santori bring in the last grapes of the season, Quinn's controversial past becomes intertwined with the murder and the rare wine--and the outcome is devasting. What Lucie finally uncovers is a web of deceit affecting not only the international wine world, but her own world as well.