The Billionaire's Vinegar

March 17, 2008
The titular bottle, from a cache of allegedly fine, allegedly French wine, allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson in the 1780s, set a record price when auctioned in 1985. The subsequent brouhaha over the cache’s authenticity takes wine journalist Wallace on a piquant journey into the mirage-like world of rare wines. At its center are Hardy Rodenstock, an enigmatic German collector with a suspicious knack for unearthing implausibly old and drinkable wines, and Michael Broadbent, a Christie’s wine expert, who auctioned Rodenstock’s lucrative finds. The argument over the Jefferson bottles and other rarities aged for decades, flummoxed a wine establishment desperate to keep the cork in a controversy that might deflate the market for antique vintages. (In the author’s telling, a 2006 lawsuit almost settles the issue.) 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 (Broadbent describes one wine as redolent of chocolate and “schoolgirls’ uniforms”). Investigating wines so old and rare they could taste like anything, he playfully questions the very foundations of connoisseurship.

Starred review from July 15, 2008
In 1985 in London, the Forbes publishing family paid more than $150,000 for a nearly 200-year-old bottle of Ch[teau Lafite Bordeaux rumored to have once been owned by Thomas Jefferson. The bottle was part of a collection unearthed by German wine entrepreneur Hardy Rodenstock. At first only a few doubted the authenticity of the wine, but over time, as more bottles from the same cache were sold, the questions about Rodenstock and his Jeffersonian bottles kept coming. Wallace, a journalist who has written for magazines such as "Food & Wine" and "Philadelphia", has crafted a richly intriguing tale of wine collecting, Thomas Jefferson, and the rivalry between the wine departments at Christie's and Sotheby's, following the trail of Rodenstock and his famous "discovery." With the same deliciously entertaining blend of history, mystery, and wine found in Don and Petie Kladstrup's "Wine and War", Wallace's book is highly recommended for public libraries.John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2008
Wallace takes readers into the closed society of collectors of fine wines, a world restricted to wine experts and the superrich. He focuses his story on the remarkable 1985 auction that saw a price record set for a unique bottle of old wine that had at one time apparently been destined for the cellars of Thomas Jefferson. Wallace recounts Jeffersons stay in prerevolutionary France, where the American soaked up French culture and journeyed to Bordeaux to arrange export of a few cases of claret to his Monticello home. Skipping to the present era, Wallace profiles Michael Broadbent, whose estimable palate and keen business sense have made him the worlds preeminent evaluator and auctioneer for large collections of fine wines all over the world. The ease with which shady characters have infiltrated this marketplace with substandard and counterfeit wines makes for a cautionary tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)