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| The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine | 
 enlarge | Author: Benjamin Wallace
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.72
You Save: $10.23 (41%)
New (37) Used (16) from $13.17
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 3291
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307338770
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.2223
EAN: 9780307338778
ASIN: 0307338770
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 41-45 of 45 | | « PREV 1 ... | | |
 The Grifter and His Ultrarich Marks May 28, 2008
46 out of 51 found this review helpful
It's not right to fool people, especially to make money from them. It's still fun, however, to learn about how suckers have gotten swindled, if the suckers aren't you or someone close to you. It's especially fun if the suckers are successful tycoons who are used to having the world and its denizens bow to their wills. It's fun, too, if the suckers are partaking in some particular form of snobbery, like the prestige that comes from buying hugely expensive bottles of wine. When a bottle went in 1985 for $156,000, the world swooned at the presumptuousness, and the press went wild calculating just how many hundreds of dollars each little sip would cost. Twenty years later, the fun is that the bottle was a phony, and the buyers of that particular bottle and of who knows how many others had been taken in by a very smart wine expert who eventually got caught. This is a fun story, told with verve and detail in _The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine_ (Crown) by Benjamin Wallace. Wallace has researched different facets of wine history, so there is a good deal of science and social history in his book, and he has the eye for detail of a good mystery writer (it isn't surprising that this nonfiction book has recently been optioned to be turned into a movie). You don't have to be interested in wine to find this story of human foibles funny and instructive.
The bottle in question was auctioned by Christie's in 1985. It was a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, and was presented as having been part of the cellar of the wine enthusiast Thomas Jefferson. It was engraved "1787 Lafitte" (the way they spelled it then) and had the initials "Th.J." Christie's was the most prestigious of auctioneers in the department of fine and historic wines, and it vouched for the authenticity of the bottle. The wine had been found and placed on the market by a German wine dealer named Hardy Rodenstock, who had previously been a pop-band manager. Rodenstock refused to say who sold the wine to him, nor how many other bottles there were. But he was doing a great business in very rare, very old wines, and customers were in those days eager to buy his finds, whether he would reveal their provenance or not. Neither Christie's nor potential buyers took the simple step of checking with the museum staff at Monticello, Jefferson's home, to see if there were any record of such a purchase by him. Jefferson was meticulous, even obsessive, about documenting his purchases of wine and everything else, so there should have been a record. There was none. Rodenstock's silence on where his fine old wines were coming from should not have taken two decades to foster suspicion in some of those who were buying from him, but such suspicions eventually started up. Wallace is exactly right about how the con game was played: "As with all successful cons, the marks and the grifter had been collaborators. One sold the illusion that the others were desperate to buy." Rodenstock made the mistake of selling Jefferson bottles to a litigious Florida tycoon who spent a fortune on investigators and laboratory tests to demonstrate fraud. Wallace cannot end his book with Rodenstock being convicted and sent to jail, but the arguments included in the book seem conclusive. Readers will be eager to hear about further legal news in the case.
There wasn't anything vintners could do in the seventeenth century to make sure that counterfeits didn't show up two centuries later, but Wallace explains that steps are being taken these days to make sure no future Rodenstock can pull the same tricks. Laser-etching of bottles or embossing them with particular marks is one step, as is using watermarked and ultraviolet-tagged labels. Another step is using particularly adhesive glue to affix the label, but this will irritate collectors who like putting labels in their scrapbooks. There will be future wine counterfeiters, but they will have to work harder. And that bottle sold at Christie's in 1985? It was bought by Kip Forbes, under orders from his father Malcolm Forbes. The father was furious that the son had paid so much, but he always had a yen for publicity, and realized that having such a headline-making bottle was just what he needed. He put it on display in a case specially highlighted, and the heat from the light made for just the opposite of a wine cellar. It shrank the cork, which fell in, and even if the wine was fake, it wasn't even wine after that, just the vinegar of this book's title. You couldn't ask for a more fittingly symbolic end to all the selfishness and self-importance that Wallace has illustrated in this fascinating tale.
An Enjoyable Glimpse at a Different World May 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a revealing look at a little known part of the wine world - the collection of incredibly rare wines by the super rich. For them, it is more about competition, history, one-upsmanship and obsession rather than sharing an excellent bottle of wine with friends. The story is populated with interesting European and American characters; collectors, auctioneers, salesmen, historians and scientists who all have a role in the rarefied world of very old and expensive French wine. As is to be expected, the less scrupulous begin to work their way into a world where buyers, some knowledgeable and some ignorant, pay large sums for bottles of uncertain heritage. But the providers of these mysterious bottles push too far and soon several buyers, who have significant resources, start to shine a bright light into the shadowy corners of the wine world.
Wallace does a fine job illuminating this obscure but fascinating club of European aristocracy and new money. The only negative is that the story is quite diffuse; there are many collectors who make an appearance but then drop out of the story. While the anecdotes and stories are uniformly interesting, the story lacks a strong narrative drive or satisfying conclusion (the lawsuits are still ongoing). But these are minor flaws; if you like wine you'll love the book.
Fascinating Journey through the World of Rare Wine May 20, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
A volume about collecting rare vintage wine might seem an unusual topic for a real page-turner of a book, but Benjamin Wallace's "The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine" is an enthralling exploration of the hype and mystery surrounding the mania of the 1980s and 1990s about pursuing and buying bottles of rare and expensive (!) vintages of old wine. The starting point of the book is the 1985 auction in which a single bottle of 1787 Lafite Bordeaux, a bottle supposedly once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, sold for over [..]
Wallace leads the reader over decades of intrigue and deception, as it becomes seemingly increasingly evident that much of such rare wine (including that bottle of 1787 Lafite) is fraudulent. The portraits of the people involved -- sellers and buyers and auctioneers and technical experts -- are well-drawn. What is perhaps most remarkable is that Wallace appears to have formed and maintained cordial relationships with almost every major player in the story, including the man widely suspected of being the chief wine faker, giving the author an unmatched view of the whole business.
Even if your only connection with wine is an occasional glass of grape with dinner, "The Billionaire's Vinegar" is a book almost guaranteed to hold your interest -- and to teach you more about wine than you have ever known.
Popping The Cork On A Story Too Good To Be True May 20, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Talk about catching lightning in a bottle.
In 1985, Christie's of London was the venue for a landmark auction; a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux--one, reportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, was sold for $156,000.
To make this story even more intriguing was this historic bottle being found amongst a number of bottles unearthed in a Paris cellar and the winning bidder was a member of the Forbes family.
But some of the greatest stories are built on a foundation of cheap bricks and cheaper mortar; and, as it turns out, like the alleged bricked-up cellar that the Jefferson bottle was housed.
Author Benjamin Wallace takes the reader on a journey of incredible wealth, rivalries & egos and a discovery that was too good to be true, but still duped so many who desperately wanted something more than white lightning.
This is a world tour of the history of wine, historical figures and the bitter aftertaste when reality actually pops the cork on a grand illusion.
When Money Isn't Enough May 13, 2008
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
Mr. Wallace has produced a great read that is interesting from a historical prospective while it harpoons the very wealthy whose pursuit of money is no longer satisfying. Nope, these folks have to pursue a type of collectable that they cannot have any provenance for, which experts in the field can only hope to guess at what the bottle contains. Wine that is a century younger than the bottle on the book cover might at best be "recognizable as wine", unless of course it has become an ingredient for salad dressing.
The central charlatan in this tale is a master at exploiting the wishes of collectors and even the experts that should know better. Or perhaps that do know better and just let their own egos persuade them that in spite of zero evidence the product is real, and worse, valid sources that explain there is nothing to suggest the wine's legitimacy, never slow down. On with the auction!
The book is not just about human nature and its dimmer moments, there is a great deal of information on wine production, wine history and enough wine tasting descriptions for the most avid connoisseur. Or if you find the whole field a bit pretentious and tedious you might still be entertained by the likes of what follows "the art of drinking the very oldest rarities required an extra degree of connoisseurship-almost a kind of necrophilia".
I look forward to many more from the pen of Mr. Wallace. This is a very good offering that should find a wide audience whether you are an avid wine drinker or you feel the 18th Amendment was a great idea.
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