Jeremy Brand, professor of popular culture at Calloway State University, becomes involved in solving a double murder with the help of his good friend Harriet Strong, chief of police. Brand, a nationally-known wine expert, shares with the chief an interest in wine, and they meet once or twice a week to share a bottle of wine and talk about wine-related things. Wine talk changes to a discussion of criminal activity when a request for help with a colleague's tenure case escalates into an investigation of academic fraud, blackmail, arson and murder.
When Brand begins looking into the first murder, he discovers the dean's secret notes about the faculty in hidden files in his computer. Knowledge of these secrets turns out to be explosive in more sense than one. The identification of the murderer takes place at a wine tasting, proving once again the truth of the saying, in vino veritas.