Steven Laine’s first wine thriller, Root Cause, was released in 2019, by Turner Publishing. Kirkus Reviews called it “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’.”

 

Steven is a French Wine Scholar, an Italian Wine Scholar, a Spanish Wine Scholar, a Canadian Wine Scholar. He is the only North American ever invited to join the Champagne Academy in France and is a member of International Thriller Writers.

 

As an award-winning restaurateur and hotelier, he has travelled the world working in luxury hotels for international brands including The Ritz, Hilton, Starwood, Marriott, Jumeirah, and Pan Pacific. He developed his passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in London, England. Since then, he has visited hundreds of wineries in Napa, Sonoma, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.

 

During the pandemic, he worked the 2020 harvest as a harvest cellarman for three months to learn the winemaking process firsthand from the winemakers at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery in British Columbia, Canada’s Best Winery, 2019. 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.

 

He is currently living in London working on his next wine thriller, The Somm, and looking forward to releasing his latest wine thriller, Jupiter’s Blood, in the near future. He is taking the WSET Level 4 Diploma, the pre-cursor to the Master of Wine program.
 

Organisations Steven is part of:

• Champagne Academy

• Confrerie du Sabre D’or

• Ordre de Coteaux de Champagne

• WSET – Wine & Spirit Education Trust