The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
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 Château 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...
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“Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeekThe Billionaire’s Vinegar tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. Updated for paperback with a new epilogue.The New York Times - Bryan Miller…captivating…Wallace frames his narrative as a suspenseful mystery, although we pretty well know whodunit early on. He escorts readers through the fast and fulsome world of high-stakes wine collecting, where $1,000 bottles of grand cru Burgundy are guzzled like lemonade and conversations revolve around trophy wines in home cellars that can be the size of a high school gymnasium.
1 Lot 337 12 Incognito 73 Tomb Raider 214 Monsieur Yquem 415 Provenance 576 "We Did What You Told Us" 677 Imaginary Value 818 The Sweetness of Death 959 Salad Dressing 10710 A Pleasant Stain, but Not a Great One 12511 The Diviner of Wines 13912 A Built-in Preference for the Obvious 15313 Radioactive 17314 Letters from Hubsi 18315 "Awash in Fakes" 19716 The Last Vertical 21317 Koch Bottles 22518 Ghost Particles 23719 Tailing Meinhard 25120 The Finish 265Notes 283Acknowledgements 315
