The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
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It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.

In 1985, at a heated auction by Christieâ€™s of London, a 1787 bottle of ChÃ¢teau Lafite Bordeauxâ€”one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jeffersonâ€”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 wouldnâ€™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 would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing playersâ€”among them Michael Broadbent, the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women and staked his reputation on the record-setting sale; Serena Sutcliffe, Broadbentâ€™s elegant archrival, whose palate is covered by a hefty insurance policy; and Bill Koch, the extravagant Florida tycoon bent on exposing the truth about Rodenstock.

Pursuing the story from Monticello to London to Zurich to Munich and beyond, Benjamin Wallace also offers a mesmerizing history of wine, complete with vivid accounts of subterranean European laboratories where old vintages are dated and of Jeffersonâ€™s colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture.

Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, The Billionaireâ€™s Vinegar is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. It is also the debut of an exceptionally powerful new voice in narrative non-fiction.
Country USA
Manufacturer Crown Publishers
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2008-05-13
UnitCount 5
EANs 9780307338778

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Crown Publishers
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2008-05-13
UnitCount	5
EANs	9780307338778

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

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