The Billionaire’s Vinegar: the Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace discusses the most expensive bottle of wine ever bought – a 1787 vintage of Lafite wine. By discussing different aspects of the sale
The Billionaire’s Vinegar opens a window into the lavish world of those dealing with old and expensive wines.
The bottle was sold at auction for $156,000. Part of the allure to the bottle was not just the vintage, but the initials “Th.J” engraved on the bottle, lending belief to the claim that this was one of a cache of Thomas Jefferson’s wines. It was one of many old wines sourced by Hardy Rodenstock, a German collector known for his charisma and incredible finds of rare wines. The bottle was also one of more than hundreds of most likely faked or compromised wines that Rodenstock sold. It took twenty years for the Jefferson bottles to be deemed counterfeit, and it was only after many conflicting opinions and scientific reports were released to the public.
Wallace paints a picture rife with detail of all the major players in the wine scandal. He unfolds each viewpoint one at a time, leaving the reader eager to find out what happens next. I was quite impressed that I was able to be so engrossed in a book about a mere bottle of wine. In a way the book was written almost like an episode of CSI where new revolutionary details (often involving science) are unveiled at the most appropriate moment. This way of telling the story also allows the reader to really get a feel for the different personalities that made this story possible. In a way, this tale was more about the egos of those dealing with wine than the actual bottles themselves. “The bottles were never about what was in them,” the author remarks near the end of the book (281). By going into detail about each person involved, the author makes that statement very clear. Had Michael Broadbent not been so intensely focused on getting a great sale, he might have put more effort into validating the bottle’s origin and many people may not have been duped. If Kip Forbes and Marvin Shaken had never felt the compelling need to possess the bottle, the price may not have skyrocketed out of proportion.
The one problem I did have with the storytelling was that there were times when a great deal of detail was given to an aspect when it was not yet apparent why it was an important part of the story. For example, a lot of detail was put into the sale of the other Jeffersonian bottles, but the relevance of those bottles’ stories to the plot was not yet revealed, as it seemed this was a tale focusing on the Forbes’ bottle. This bogged down portions of the book, as you had to slog through details that were as of yet not interesting.
What I did particularly like about the novel is that you did not necessarily have to be a wine snob yourself to understand what was going on. Even with knowledge as rudimentary as mine I was able to understand the wine terminology and why certain aspects were important. The best part about this was that it didn’t seem like the author took a timeout in storytelling to give a sudden definition – the meaning was well woven into the text of the novel. For example, before reading this book, I had no idea that wines could come in different standard-sized bottles, let alone that the different sizes had specific names. However, Wallace makes a point of explaining what exactly a “magnum” or “Jeroboam” meant (two or six bottles’ worth of wine) and does so in a way that does not detract from the rest of the narrative (23). He then explains that wine ages more slowly in these larger bottles, and immediately you as the reader understand why certain collectors would pay more for different containers of the same wine. Such knowledge is seamlessly woven through the entire book.
The wine itself, like everything else, was described beautifully. Wallace refers many times to the tasting notes of the actual people who drank the wines, and even highlights the differences between how personal the notes where. Michael Broadbent liked to describe the wines as women and looked down upon Serena Sutcliffe because she used “gushing and fanciful” words to describe wine (215). No matter the source, the inclusion of the notes lets Wallace paint a scene for the reader’s nose as well as the eyes. A particularly well illustrated scene was one where another of the supposed Thomas Jefferson bottles is opened, a 1787 Mouton (102). Wallace makes the reader feel like they are present when the bottle is opened. You can see the “molasses brown” wine and feel the anticipation as the sweet smell of the wine slowly fills the air in the room.
This scene also drives home a few points discussed in class. One being that the scent of a wine is just as important, or even more important than the taste itself. The scents of wine were often quoted in the tasting notes included in the book, and they obviously added value to the wines in the eyes of the tasters. The scene also demonstrates the benefits of decanting a wine before drinking it, so the wine can oxidize and develop more. The tasters were unable to detect any smell at all when the wine was first opened, but they reported that the wine seemed to morph and change even past 45 minutes of tasting it.
Another point that was brought up in class was the wine world’s reluctance to do anything with new technology. The book mentions a feud developing between Hardy Rodenstock and Lur Saluces, the proprietor of Chateau d’Yquem. The proprietor had begun to use a new technology called cryoextraction to harvest the grapes, and Rodenstock responded vehemently (155). To Rodenstock the new method was like stopping the traditional hand-picking of grapes in favor of machine-picking, and called the technology a “horror machine”. Just like using a non-organic cork instead of a natural one, this scene demonstrated how any change, even if made by a prestigious place, could create controversy when it came to producing quality wine.
I think the author, in writing this book, wanted to give depth and dimension to a story that could have been very simple. Just saying that certain very old bottles of wine were faked does not give the appropriate scope to the story. Hardy Rodenstock managed to insinuate himself into the wine world as an expert and many books on red wine contained notes from his tastings or bottles that he provided. The author lists nine “wine-world icons” who had been affected in some way, including Robert Parker (276). Wallace makes the con seem very personal by delving into the details and personalities of each person who bought the wine, why the wine was important enough to spend large amounts of money upon it, and each person’s reaction when they found they had been duped. Bill Koch took the finding that his Jefferson bottle was fake very personally and spent over a million dollars on just finding out its authenticity, not to mention the dollars spent on the lawsuits that would eventually bring Rodenstock’s credibility down (270).
I think another point that the author wanted to bring across was how easy it was to fake wine, and how the value of expensive wine seemed to be blown out of proportion. The book includes a set of directions on how to properly fake that a wine is older than it should be (163), and points to a Wine Spectator article with exact recipes for certain vintages provided by Rodenstock’s sommelier friend, Ralf Frenzel (203). Out of all of the valuable commodities in the world, wine is the only one that does not have a test to determine the validity of a claim. Pure gold can be chemically analyzed easily - wine cannot be analyzed because to open the bottle to sample it is to destroy the value of the wine. Even if the wine is legitimate, the nature of the liquid itself does not guarantee that the quality of the wine within has remained so over many years. This, along with the egos that created an atmosphere of one-upmanship, made creating fake old wines a very lucrative and attractive business.
Overall, I thought this book was very interesting and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in wine. Even if the intriguing story does not appeal to you, the wealth of knowledge about old and rare wines is worth learning. The writing is superb, and draws you into a world of fortune and ego that many of us will otherwise not be privy to. To adopt the wine world’s one hundred point scale, the book may not be 100, but it is definitely worth a score in the mid-nineties.
Bibliography
Wallace, Benjamin.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: the Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine. New York: Crown Publishers, 2008. Print.
