California Drinking with L. Lee Kane

California Drinkin’

The Central Valley, where I’m now from is a vast, hot, 300- mile-long expanse extending from Sacramento to the north and the San Joaquin Valley in the South, and has the most fertile areas in the United States for growing grapes. We produce a full 60 per cent of all the agricultural products in California and we crush 75 per cent of all wine grapes. Wineries are huge. And so are the crops.

One of the core differences between the wine industry in California and that in Europe is the people who run it. The California wine revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s was largely initiated by men and women who were not from winemaking families. After the Prohibition, which lasted 13 years there were few people to train the newcomers, including Ernest and Julio Gallo, which makes close to 70 million cases, including popular inexpensive wine and Robert Mondavi Woodbridge wines which make slightly more than 6 million cases a year. The interesting thing is that these three self-made men were self-taught. Everything they learned they read out of a book.

• ·       More than 90 per cent of the wine made in the United States is made in California.
• ·       The state’s incredibly diverse climate and geography allow California wines to be made in a profusion of styles from dozens of different grape varieties.
• ·       California’s winemakers are among the most innovative and open to experimentation in the world.

 Author Linda Lee Kane

Linda L. Kane MA in Education, PPS, School Psychologist, and Learning Disability Specialist, is the author of Death on the Vine, Chilled to the Bones and The Black Madonna. She lives with her husband, three dogs, one bird, and eight horses in California. 

The sky is bigger, the ground harder, the freshly grown produce amazing, and the people diversified where I live in sunny, make it very sunny, Fresno, California.

                We moved here with little to no expectations except to move back to our hometown of Huntington Beach within 5 years. Thirty-nine years later we have grown to love our home in the San Joaquin Valley, the people, and the opportunities that were afforded us. I was able to receive a masters’ degree and work at a local college.

                Today I write and edit, paint, play with my two grandchildren, my three dogs, ride my Saddlebred horses and drive my Hackney pony and enjoy life to the fullest.

Linda Lee Kane on the web:

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Death on the Vine

Just before high school graduation, Daisy Murphy returns home from a football game and finds her mother standing over her abusive boyfriend’s body—holding a bloody hammer. In the aftermath, Daisy flees her home and eventually establishes a new life as an expert winemaker in the Central Valley of California. But as hard as she tries to get away from her past, the effects of that horrible night travel with her. 

Detective Jake Frisco has unearthed a murder at the vineyard where Daisy is employed as the winery’s expert winemaker. It doesn’t take long to discover that Daisy is haunted by her past and carries a heavy burden. It seems that possible involvement in an unsolved murder is part of her life’s baggage. Does this put Daisy at the top of the suspect’s list? Can he put aside his growing feelings for her and follow the leads in the case, even if they take him straight to her as the murderer?

Can Daisy finally face her past and trust that the truth she offers the Detective will be enough to save her? Will she find the courage to ask for a future beyond the sorrow of her youth—a future filled with love and self-worth?

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