The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine Kindle Edition

Wine WhinesBy Bob GelmsThe Billionaire’s Vinegar How many out there like to drink wine? I thought so, me too. Well this book is an entertaining tome about mega rich people behaving over the top about super rare wines that, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t really be all that important. It’s also about super rich people getting ripped off for a mega amount of money and that’s always very entertaining. The story in The Billionaire’s Vinegar dizzyingly revolves around a cache of Bordeaux wine from a superb Chateau circa 1788. That in itself would make this story drink splendidly. The real kicker in all this, and the aspect that had everyone connected to it panting like a thirsty man just in from the desert willing to drink just about anything, is that these bottles were owned by Thomas Jefferson. Wait for it – he also initialed all the bottles. The man who found the Jefferson bottles, Hardy Rodenstock, is a rather mysterious German wine dealer with a suspicious past and a knack for discovering tremendously rare bottles of some of the world’s best wines. At the time of the Jefferson discovery, an American family with a love for all things Jefferson was supporting an exhibit of Jefferson memorabilia from their vast collection of Jefferson items. The family scion was sent to purchase the bottle at auction. He did and spent $165,000 for the one bottle of wine. I need to mention right here that we are talking about the Forbes family as in Malcolm Forbes and his son Christopher. They were hoodwinked. There was suspicion from the beginning that Hardy Rodenstock had counterfeited the Jefferson bottles. There wasn’t any proof but there was plenty of suspicion. If you have the desire to counterfeit a bottle of wine The Billionaires Vinegar has a chapter or two on how you can do it and probably get away with it. This is an intriguing peek into the highbrow world of rare wines and the super rich and what they like to do in their spare time. I was amazed at how cavalier the bottles were treated by the people who bought them. It was as if paying $100,000 for a bottle of wine was an everyday thing and once they had it, it wasn’t interesting any more. I don’t get it but I sure as hell would drink a glass if it was offered to me.Shadows In The Vineyard Maximilian Potter has written a riveting tale about a true-life criminal escapade perpetrated on one of the world’s great wineries, Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine.Oenophiles have, more or less, treated the wine region of Burgundy as the bastard stepchild of its more famous sister over in Bordeaux. Those in the know, however, say that wines from Burgundy regularly outperform wines from any other region in France. There is one Chateau that sits at the top of the pyramid. It is the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, simplified to DRC. Wine experts consider wines from this Chateau to be the finest in the world and the most expensive wines from the Burgundy region. The terrior of DRC sits on the best wine growing dirt on planet Earth. It’s hard to deny this when you taste their wine. The crime was a simple one. Blackmail. A mysterious villain, Jacques Soltys, living the life of a hermit in the woods, decides to cash in for the big score. He seems, to me, to be part chemist, botanist and vintner. He is a failure at almost everything he has tried including bank robbing, kidnapping and other illegal schemes. Now comes Aubert de Villaine, the aristocratic headman and owner of DRC. He receives a puzzling letter that, at first, he disregards. It is, of course, a ransom note. De Villaine will pay the criminal €1 million. If not, the vines themselves will be poisoned. This scheme attacks the basic values and principles of what it means to be French. It is a crime so preposterous as to be almost unthinkable. It can be likened to blowing up the Jefferson Memorial unless you were paid $3 million. This is a real crime that occurred in 2010 and, sad to say, it partially succeeded. There is a confluence of brilliant detectives, chemists and botanists who try to defeat Soltys. The good guys set up a very clever sting operation to catch Mr. Soltys. A lot happens; a lot. In the annuls of true crime books this is right up there. It has a literary quality that is matched with Mr. Potter’s exceedingly dramatic pacing that creates tension you can swat at with a grape vine. This is for both lovers of wine and the folks who like true crime. This crime is dastardly and its solving is both clever and timely. I sure enjoyed Shadows in the Vineyard and I’m thinking you will as well.

Fascinating look at the growth of the fine wine collection world in America getting caught up in its own hubris during the eighties and nineties, when people who had the money to gamble found themselves gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars on the legitimacy of a few bottles of wine from back in Thomas Jefferson's time, and from his own collection...or was it? Only one person knew for sure, but still people who could afford it got caught up in the mystery, and so many who didn't have a clue what they were doing, although they certainly thought they did, went ahead and did it anyhow, unleashing enough Shadenfreude for the reader to keep you reading to the end. I couldn't put the book down until the last page. And along with all this, there's lots of fine wine information for anyone who is as interested as I was, and am. I learned a lot just reading this book and one of the main things I learned was that people with Plenty of Money don't always have sense enough to know when to quit, especially when their reputation as a fine wine collector is at stake. This is one of those wildly but subtly, well-written, fun books where you find yourself rooting for what might turn out to be the bad guy . ;-) If you like rare fine wines coupled with a look at how the One Percenters like to raise their stakes, this is your book.

Could the bottle of Lafite, with the initials of Thomas Jefferson and dated 1787, awaiting auction at Christie's in London in 1987, possibly have been part of a newly discovered Nazi hoard? As Michael Broadbent, the head of the wine department of Christie's, prepared to auction off this bottle, the oldest authenticated bottle of red wine ever to come up for auction at Christie's, he knew that it would become the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. Parts of the Old Marais district in Paris had recently been torn down, and some wondered if the bottle was found walled up in a basement. Others suggested that it had a Nazi history. Then again, Thomas Jefferson had sent hundreds of cases of wine home to Monticello when he left his job as Minister to France, and one of these cases may have been lost or stolen.Speculation was rife because of the age and importance of this bottle, not just for its qualities as wine but also because of its historical importance. The bottle had been consigned to Christie's by Hardy Rodenstock, a German wine collector who refused to say exactly where it had come from, revealing only that it was from a hidden cellar in an unidentified 18th century house in Paris. The cellar supposedly contained a hundred bottles, two dozen of which, all from 1784 - 1787, were engraved with the initials "Th.J." After a bidding war, Kip Forbes, son of publisher Malcolm Forbes, was declared the winner with a bid of $156,000.Questions began to arise about this bottle almost immediately. There was no evidence that Jefferson had ever purchased a 1787 Lafite, and in fact, Jefferson had recorded the purchase of only two of the four wines that Rodenstock had found. The engraving style on the auctioned bottle had never before been used by Jefferson, and all the other Rodenstock wines had exactly the same engraving style. "It seemed odd [too] that whoever first found the bottles would not have shopped them to the highest bidder, instead of automatically selling to Rodenstock." As several more of the Jefferson bottles came up for auction over the next couple of years, each one setting a new record, questions continued to arise about the bottles themselves, the amount of evaporation, and ultimately, even the instruments used to engrave the bottles. Unusually, at every tasting Rodenstock sponsored, his men secured the corks and sealing wax after the bottles were opened, and no one had access to them for testing purposes.In the second half of the book, author Benjamin Wallace takes the reader from 1987 to the present, detailing the new techniques which can now be used (and were later used on the Jefferson bottles) to date bottles, wine, sediments, engraving, wax, and corks. High tech labs, with experts on everything from tests for germanium, thermoluminescence, carbon, and lead, create a fascinating story of how the wine market has evolved to the present and the safeguards now in place to prevent fraud of this nature. Benjamin Wallace keeps the excitement high as he details the search for information about the Jefferson wines and the eventual outcome regarding their "rightness." Well researched and filled with details about the wine industry, the book bears reading now, in light of recent decisions in the lawsuits brought by William Koch and the auctioneer, Michael Broadbent.

Whilst most earlier reviews quite rightly highlight the gullibility & vanity of the buyers of trophy wines, the main shortcoming of TBV is that none of the characters is sympathetic.The con man, Rodenstock, is by turns unctuous & bullying. Wallace leaves him as rather two dimensional, so we don't have a baddie to boo.The main expert, Broadbent, is painted as thinskinned & rather easily seduced by the glamour of the Rodenstock cellar. He shows no gravitas. Robert Parker Jr is hardly even a bit part, although one leaves with the impression of Jancis Robinson being happy to take Rodenstock's hospitality before disassociating herself somewhat readily once the scandal breaks.As for the cast of billionaires, their role is to appear, at root, foolish & Wallace never lets them transcend that.So not easy to get involved with the characters. What of the plot?Wallace writes brightly & has a happy turn of phrase, but eventually sinks under the weight of describing protracted forensic & legal procedures. There are maybe one too many suspect ancient bottles & one too many legal faxes.Why read it, then?I learnt a fair amount about the inner workings of the fine wine trade, an area which interests me. I wouldn't recommend this book, however, for the general reader.Overall, a detailed write up of the Rodenstock episode for the annals, but not a deckchair gripper.

For someone who's recently taken an interest in all things 'wine' I thought this sounded like an interesting read. Sadly due to an ongoing lawsuit (i think) it's not available to buy in the UK. I managed to get a copy in very good condition for pennies sent from the US and really enjoyed it.The one part of the book i felt could've been explored more was the opening few chapters, describing Michael Broadbent's young days spent touring around the wine cellars of the landed gentry. I'd love to know more about this and his experiences there, plus it would've maybe given more flavour to one of the main characters of the book.

Well researched and skilfully written - an interesting and thought-provoking account.

A phenomenal book. I loved it. Engaging story, reads like a novel. I raved about it for weeks. You don’t have to know anything about wine to understand and love it.

Gripping take of skullduggery in the wine world.