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From Monsters and Critics.com Books News Ever wonder? Benjamin Wallace’s book, The Billionaire's Vinegar, is what USA Today describes as, “His splendid account of an international wine scandal of recent vintage, it was some wealthy collectors in the 1980s and 1990s who really got hosed.” Just to give a bit from the product description, “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 arose. Why wouldn’t Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled Nazi hoard? Or did his reticence conceal an even darker secret?” It was, after all, the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. The USA Today reviewer then notes, “That leads to 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.” Crown is the publisher. Read the review here and visit Amazon for more details.
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