The Billionaire's Vinegar (Paperback) ~ Benjamin Wallace (Author) Cover Art

The Billionaire's Vinegar (Paperback)

By: Benjamin Wallace (Author)

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Publisher's note

A real-life historical mystery journeys behind the scenes of the secretive world of wine aficionados to describe the 1985 purchase of a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux for $156,000, the mysterious background of the wine, and the enigmatic wine collector who discovered the bottle, once supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, in a bricked-up Paris cellar. Reprint.

Annotation

Benjamin Wallace investigates the dubious legacy of a bottle of wine which, in 1985, sold for $156,000 at a Christie's auction. That price was based not so much on the vintage of the wine, which was a 1787 Chateau Lafite, but rather on the possibility that the previous owner of the bottle was one Thomas Jefferson. While the bottle does sport the emblazoned initials "ThJ," it remains very much in question whether Mr. Jefferson could really have hidden the bottle so adeptly that it would not be found for almost 200 years. Wallace uses this intriguing mystery as a springboard to explore the bizarre subculture of wine collectors, who hoard crates of wine in cellars bigger than the rest of the house and breathlessly describe their most cherished vintages with lurid language normally reserved for love poems. Since it seems unlikely that the Forbes family, who bought the contentious bottle, will be popping the cork to sample their purchase, one mystery will likely remain unsolved--is there a time limit on the old adage about wine getting better with age?

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.
In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie's of London, a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux--one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson--went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose. Why wouldn't Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled Nazi hoard? Or did his reticence conceal an even darker secret?
It would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing players--among them Michael Broadbent, the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women and staked his reputation on the record-setting sale; Serena Sutcliffe, Broadbent's elegant archrival, whose palate is covered by a hefty insurance policy; and Bill Koch, the extravagant Florida tycoon bent on exposing the truth about Rodenstock.
Pursuing the story from Monticello to London to Zurich to Munich and beyond, Benjamin Wallace also offers a mesmerizing history of wine, complete with vivid accounts of subterranean European laboratories where old vintages are dated and of Jefferson's colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture.
Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, "The Billionaire's Vinegar" is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. It is also the debut of an exceptionally powerful new voice in narrativenon-fiction.

"From the Hardcover edition."

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