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The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, by Benjamin Wallace
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Review
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Captivating.” —New York Times Book Review“The season's wine reading cannot get off to a better start than with The Billionaire’s Vinegar, one of the rare books on wine that transcends the genre ...Though the story is the collector’s world, the subject is also greed and how it can contort reality to fit one’s desires. It’s been optioned for Hollywood. I hope the movie’s as good as the book.” —New York Times “This is a captivating tale, even if you care nothing about wine.”—Wall Street Journal “Entertaining.”—Washington Post “Fine writing, great reporting, and a story so delicious you could have it for dessert.”—Fortune“Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale….as delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —Businessweek“Splendid...A delicious mystery that winds through musty European cellars, Jefferson-era France and Monticello, engravers' shops, a nuclear physics lab, rival auction houses and legendary multi-day tastings conducted by the shadowy German who had discovered the Jefferson collection...Ripe for Hollywood.” —USA Today“A gem of a book...Mr. Wallace answers questions raised about Rodenstock and his remarkable find with a narrative that moves slowly and gracefully through lively and interesting information. Mr. Wallace seems to consciously take his time revealing what he knows, much like someone tasting a fine wine. There is no rush or urgency. Just a tale that oenophiles, history buffs and ordinary wine lovers alike will savor.” —Washington Times“This is a gripping story, expertly handled by Benjamin Wallace who writes with wit and verve, drawing the reader into a subculture strewn with eccentrics and monomaniacs...Full of detail that will delight wine lovers. It will also appeal to anyone who merely savours a great tale, well told.” —The Economist“A page-turner…What makes Wallace's book worth reading is the way he fleshes out the tale with entertaining digressions into Jefferson's wine adventures, how to fake wines (who knew a shotgun blast could make a bottle look old?) and dead-on portraits of several major wine personalities who intersected unhappily with the wines.” —Bloomberg“Wallace’s depiction of rabid oenophiles staging almost decadent events to swill rare wine, knowingly depleting the reserves, are as much fun as the mystery.” —New York Daily News“Terrific.” —Slate“The Billionaire's Vinegar, is at once a detective story and a sensational history—of wine, wine snobs and the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.” —NPR.org “This book has no right to be as exciting as it is.”—Good Morning America “What people will be talking about.” —GQ “Call it wine noir... a reminder that great wine should be consumed, not just collected.” —Men's Health“A riveting wine history, wine mystery, and more.” —Food & Wine“For anyone with at least a curiosity about precious old wines and the love of a good story, this well-crafted piece of journalism may prove as intriguing and enjoyable as a fine old Bordeaux.” —Seattle Times “Nicely peels back the covers of a world most of us will never see.”—Dallas Morning News “The book handles a dozen tangential plots with Dickensian ease... The Billionaire's Vinegar is the rare book that transcends its topic, reaching out to anyone interested in a good mystery, while at the same time going into enough detail to be of interest to a serious wine drinker.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Misplaced trust, gullibility, vanity, chicanery and old-fashioned greed occupy center stage in this engrossing tale... Wallace meticulously unravels [Hardy] Rodenstock's inexorable exposure as a fraud.”—The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “An astonishing tale of intrigue, greed, pride and ego... Is this book worth your time and effort to find and read? Undoubtedly.”—Dayton Daily News “A rich blend of historical narrative and page-flipping mystery that will keep both oenophiles and teetotalers riveted.”—Philadelphia Magazine “Brings together the disparate themes of wealth, greed, narcissism, ego, and fraud, with a dollop of history and some nifty detective work thrown in for good measure... Wallace's book deserves the broad readership at which it is clearly aiming, reaching far beyond the confines of the wine trade and wine collectors.”—The World of Fine Wine “Masterfully unravel[s] a fast-paced tale of power, deception, and oenophilic excess... has the feverish momentum of a page-turner... offering an unprecedented portrait of a case that rocked an impossibly exclusive world to its foundation.”—Bold Type “Truly riveting... For anyone familiar with the wine world, the book will provide extraordinary enjoyment, more or less as beach material. But this book has great potential to cross over to a mainstream audience... In some ways, the most interesting aspect of the story is how people want so much to believe in things, and so, they do. That is really the take-away message of the book, and Wallace has done a lovely job of presenting it.”—Barron's “A superb storyteller... engaging and vivid, Wallace's prose is supremely well composed, and turns a complex web of commercial transactions—albeit an intriguing one—into a mystery of Hitchcockian proportions.”—Decanter “Benjamin Wallace's brilliant new book is a work of carefully-researched fact, rather than fiction, but it's not short of drama, intrigue or remarkable personalities... a fascinating, page-flipping mystery... a forensic, and frequently amusing, examination of the world of fine and rare wine.”—Wine & Spirit “A rich depiction of the history of wine—its prestige, its chemistry, its recurring susceptibility to fraudulence... There is delicious insider's gossip aplenty in this book, enough to keep any serious wine aficionado turning the pages. And for those with a more casual interest, Wallace's centuries-spanning narrative and sharp eye for detail make the book a fun and informative read.”—ImbibeMagazine.com “So well written that it is an absolute pleasure to read... [a] profound look into the world of wine collecting.”—Dr. Vino's Wine Blog “A modern nonfiction who done it... transports the reader back and forth through time and across the sea, from the boardrooms of 20th century publishing tycoons to 18th century France and the young American nation... Pull the cork on The Billionaire's Vinegar and you will sip at it, enjoying it as it develops, until every last drop is drunk.”—The Gloucester Daily Times “A tale peopled with famous and infamous characters, plunder and plonk and more than a dash of hoax and history.”—Reuters “A briskly written tale of intrigue and deceit.”—Hemispheres “[T]his thoroughly researched, engagingly written book presents the evidence from both sides... Full of entertaining real life personalities, it's a brilliant analysis of the world of fine and rare wines. It deserves to win every prize going.”—The Guardian “An old bottle of wine is rare, but a ripping good mystery about one is rarer still... Wallace's narrative leads us into a world of heiresses, celebrities, rogues, bankers, tomb raiders, dilettantes, villains, Arab potentates, millionaires and, as the tale darkens, forensic scientists, glass and handwriting experts, Jefferson scholars, FBI agents and federal court judges...For those who can't stomach another wine guide, The Billionaire's Vinegar makes learning about wine palatable... Wallace brings a reporter's discipline to both the depth of his research and to the even-handed treatment of his findings.”—The Globe and Mail (CANADA) “Wallace sips the story slowly, taking leisurely digressions into techniques for faking wine and detecting same with everything from Monticello scholarship to nuclear physics. He paints a colorful backdrop of eccentric oenophiles, decadent tastings and overripe flavor rhetoric… Investigating wines so old and rare they could taste like anything, he playfully questions the very foundations of connoisseurship.”—Publishers Weekly “[Wallace] offers a revealing look at the influx into the esoteric field of wine connoisseurship of major-player egos and big money, which created a tricky and rarified market similar to that for expensive art—and encouraged fakes in both…There's no denying the appeal of this enthrallingly mad and recondite subject.”—Kirkus Reviews“A richly intriguing tale.”—Library Journal“It is the fine details--the bouquet, the body, the notes, the finish--that make this book such a lasting pleasure, to be savored and remembered long after the last page is turned. Ben Wallace has told a splendid story just wonderfully, his touch light and deft, his instinct pitch-perfect. Of all the marvelous legends of the wine trade, this curiously unforgettable saga most amply deserves the appellation: a classic.”—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and A Crack in the Edge of the World“The Billionaire’s Vinegar is the ultimate page-turner. Written with literary intelligence, it has a cast of characters like something out Fawlty Towers meets The Departed. It takes you into a subculture so deep and delicious, you can almost taste the wine that turns so many seemingly rational people into madmen. It is superb nonfiction.” —Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights “I thoroughly enjoyed the book... fascinating...”—Robert M. Parker, Jr. “A great read... I think most readers will enjoy the detail and, like me, learn much from it... All in all this book is thoroughly recommended.”—Jancis Robinson
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About the Author
BENJAMIN WALLACE, a New York Times bestselling author, has written for GQ, the Washington Post, Food & Wine, and Philadelphia, where he was the executive editor. He lives in Brooklyn. Visit his website at BenjaminWallace.net.
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Product details
Paperback: 323 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st edition (April 14, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307338789
ISBN-13: 978-0307338785
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.9 out of 5 stars
322 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#19,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Billionaire's Vinegar is, at its heart, an account of the record breaking, 1985 auction of the oldest, most famous bottle of existing wine, a 1787 Chateau Lafite, reputedly purchased and owned at one time by Thomas Jefferson. From this event, the author examines the world of wine collecting, wine auctions and chicanery inherent in both.While the '87 Lafite is the basis for the story, the chief protagonists are Christie's director of wines, Michael Broadbent, an oenophile who founded the auction house's wine department and scoured cellars around the globe to locate and identify what would become the stars of future auctions; and a German fellow by the name of Hardy Rodenstock. Playing supporting roles are obscenely rich wine collectors, connoisseurs and wine critics around the globe who supplied, critiqued and vied for Christie's offerings. Of course, where you have vast sums of money competing for rare collectibles, you can be sure to find rampant fraud and deceit. Wine collecting is no exception.Rodenstock (an alias, it turns out) ostensibly acquired a trove of "Jefferson bottles" and subsequently sold them to wealthy collectors around the world. From the beginning, the provenance of the bottles was suspect, but inasmuch as virtually everyone involved stood to profit from their validity, the numerous indicators of fraud were conveniently swept aside. Thrown into the limelight by his promotion of the find, Rodenstock went on a twenty year run of fabricating and marketing any number of highly prized offerings, in the process becoming something of a celebrity in the world of wine collecting.Finally, over time, the indicators of fraud became too numerous and glaring to ignore; such things as old wines in containers of a size not used for the vintage being sold, wine labels utilizing glues not in existence when the wine was purportedly bottled, bottle etchings made by dental drilling equipment. Even in the face of such circumstances, the charade continued for many years, as many of the players, due to reputations at stake (such as Broadbent), civil and criminal liability (such as Rodenstock and numerous dealers) and loss of investment (on the part of the hundreds of collectors who had paid absurd prices for Rodenstock's fraudulent offerings), refused to publicly disavow the rare collectibles.This book is an excellent look, not only at the world of rare wines and other such collectibles, but into human nature and the herd mentality that allows such rampant fraud and deceit to occur and flourish, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of its existence.
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.
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