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The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Unavailable
The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Unavailable
The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

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

Written by Benjamin Wallace

Narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.

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 would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing players-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, Broadbent'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 Jefferson's colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture.

Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, The Billionaire'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.


From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 13, 2008
ISBN9780739358306
Unavailable
The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

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Reviews for The Billionaire's Vinegar

Rating: 3.4976302976303315 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

211 ratings25 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had only medium expectations for this book, and for the most part that was right on target. Moderately interesting, especially for someone like me who has a passing knowledge of French wine and some of the more famous chateaus. Gets a little dry at times.

    Unfortunately, I'm considering ranking this two stars -- if I could rank the ending separately, I would -- because it was such a letdown at the end. I had read reviews that the ending seemed rushed, but this was much worse than I had imagined. He practically drops the story with no ending at all -- there's an intermediate court judgment, a quotation from someone saying they believe they'll eventually prevail, and then... the end?

    Couldn't he have waited to publish this until he found out what actually happened?? Or, at the very least, given us a little update on where each of the major characters stood as of the date of publication?

    Ugh, I was literally in disbelief when I got to the end of the book. Definitely an unfinished feeling.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, since there's no way I'd ever have a bottle of wine in my house that I wasn't going to drink, I had little sympathy for these big spenders. Was the wine real, or is it all a scam? Somewhat interesting, but I just kept thinking of how many bottles of drinkable wine I could have bought with that much money. Sort of interesting, but really not at all related to anything that I care about. Just goes to show you there are big talking cheaters in every area.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Liked the book but the ending was very unsatisfying.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Engrossing reading about the old-wine trade in general and the intricacies of one controversial bottle in particular, with interesting information along the way about Jefferson's own wine interests. I do wish that there was a more satisfying conclusion, though that is probably more the fault of the alleged wine faker than the story itself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is kind of a true-life thriller. This is about the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold some interesting history about Jefferson, wines, and cons. The bottle is a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux that was supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson and was sold for $156,000. It goes into a little bit about Jefferson's love of wines and how it could have been form his collection. it's also more about the exclusive society of expensive wine collectors and how one man was able to swindle millions out of rich people. It is a good, interesting read with some strong personalities thrown in.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The most expensive bottle of wine ever sold has to have some history about it, and this book tells that tale to a degree. The bottle is a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux that was supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson and was sold for $156,000 (making it the most expensive bottle of wine to date). It goes into a little bit about Jefferson's love of wines and how it could have been form his collection. However, it is less of a history book and more about the exclusive society of expensive wine collectors and how one man was able to swindle millions out of rich people. I really liked the sections where it explained how con artist have been selling fake wines for centuries and the methods they used. If you have any kind of interest in wines then you might enjoy this book. However, I would not consider it a history book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've had The Billionaire's Vinegar for a while now, reading it a bit here and a bit there, as it was the book I kept in the car and read at lunch or when I was at a restaurant alone for dinner or whatever. So the progress was pretty slow until a couple nights ago when the story really hooked me about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through and I brought it home and finished it.I'd remembered hearing about bottles of wine thought to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson being auctioned off for extraordinary prices and remember thinking 'Why would anyone spend so much on wine that must be undrinkable?' So a book that looks into the whole deal, and asks if the famous wine was even real was very intriguing.Benjamin Wallace does a good job of weaving together the stories of the bottles of wine, the major movers and shakers of the mega-wine collecting trend of the late 80's and 90's, the motivations behind such collectors (like the Forbes family and Bill Koch) and the groups they drink and collect with, the Auctioneers, the discoverer and seller, Hardy Rodenstock, and all the supporting cast of historians, wine merchants, vintners, scientists, and so forth.Initially finding a small trove of wine bottles, still with wine in them, that are 200 years old and belonged to Thomas Jefferson is an amazing an unique thing. But then more and more unbelievably old and too-good-to-be-true wines go on sale and are shared around among a group of uber-elite oenophiles. From interviews, documents, news coverage, letters and whatever else he can get Wallace retraces the provenance (or lack of provenance) of the bottles up to sale, and their fate after sale (drunk, broken, studied, mistreated in vanity displays...) as well as the motivations of the buyers. There are side trips into Jefferson's time in France and fascination with wine, the history of wine making, especially the elite French chateaux, the rise of wine-tasting and wine as bragging rights, the auction world and the rise of the wine departments at Southerby's and Christie's, and the phenomenon of counterfeit wine. The climax of the story is billionaire Ed Koch's growing suspicion about the wine he'd purchased and his relentless investigation into it's authenticity. But that climax makes up only about 60 out of 280 pages in a kind of a race to the conclusion of years of intrigue.Since this is an account of actual events, there is no absolute clear-cut conclusion, or as the author puts it no "smoking corkscrew". Were the bottles Thomas Jefferson's? Almost certainly not. Did they really contain 200 year old wine? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe partly. Maybe a different answer for each bottle. It definitely makes for an informative, interesting, well paced story, and a view in to a world that almost none of us will ever personally experience.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an interesting investigation into the phenomenon of a number of very old wine being discovered after most experts and wine collectors assumed the supply of 18th century wine was exhausted. The billionaire of the title is Bill Koch, of the Koch company, the largest privately held American corporation. Unfortunately, Koch was a purchaser of this wine and as its provenance became suspect, Koch mounted an expensive investigation into whether the wine was counterfeit. The book spans from the early 90's until 2005 and includes a number of colorful characters in Germany, UK, France, America and more, from places like Christie's, wine distributors, and chateux owners. One of the reasons this wine became $100,000+ per bottle is that it was purportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson.I found the book essentially an unsolved-crime story, well written. It went too far into the history of Thomas Jefferson for no reason, but overall stayed focused and tight. I stayed interested throughout and in parts could not put it down, which is more meaningful considering I don't drink and don't know much about wine.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fun, learned a lot about wine, particularly old wine. And collecting old wine. And faking old wine. Good mystery about bottles of wine purportedly from the cellars of Thomas Jefferson. Many many years to unravel this mystery. Wine people are pretty snotty not to consider they are fallible in their sense of old wine. Interesting chemistry, interesting ways to evaluate using science.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't know what it is, but I love books about wine. I honestly can't explain it, but the mix of history, personalities and the fruit of the vine is always something I can get into.And the first third of the book did not disappoint! It was fantastic! But then... it lost it's zeal.The story starts off with some huge auctions for some bottles of wine, unearthed in a forgotten cellar and reportedly to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson when he was assigned to work in Paris. The story picks up as these fantastic faces of the global wine trade get involved and money is flung about in record setting auctions. All of it is made that much sweeter by the fact that all of this really happened.Then you get to the middle of the book where bottles are shown off at this party and that party, so-and-so said this or that, etc. And this goes on for some time. It honestly feels like some hum drum listing of witness testimonies as the world tries to figure out the story about all of these fantastic finds.And then the last third of the story is only a few pages as things are hashed out and *bam* it's over. No real final explanations or backstory... just "here's what happened. Buh-bye." Up until this part it's read like a book, but here it feels like a newspaper article just stating the facts. I do recommend this book to anyone who enjoys wine. It's a great conversation story. Lots of names we've all heard and a great mystery to boot.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In 1985, Malcolm Forbes and his son paid more than $150,000 for a bottle of wine purported to be owned by Thomas Jefferson. Even before the auction was over, questions started popping up about this bottle and whether it was everything the seller promised it was. The Billionaire's VInegar is the story of fakery and fraud in the world of very old and very expensive wines. There are some real characters involved in the story, and the excesses of this wine - well, obsession really doesn't cover it - are fascinating to read. Besides the juicy story, there's a lot of info about first tier wines, especially very old ones, and the science that went into detecting the fraud is pretty well described too.Highly recommended, even if you're not a wine drinker!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellently written, supple vinous reportage. Combines a) readable, dramatic style, breezy pen-pictures of all the main characters and c) communicating the nuances of the wine world for the layman. Minor criticism - the story is sometimes bogged down by the breadth of the cast (sending you scuttling around to recap who a particular random oenophile / pvt investigator / scientist is. Also the pivotal character Bill Koch is introduced all very late; a slightly contrived feel of deus ex machina to the conclusion but that's just how the story tells itself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I seem to be drawn to true-life tales of con artists, scoundrels, and scallywags (see my review of the just-released Charlatan and the high rating I have on The Whiskey Robber).

    It's not that I admire them, per se; they have all cheated, defrauded, and stolen from both governments and individuals for no higher purpose than their own gain.

    But I do have to admit that I can't help but admire their chutzpah--the sheer ballsiness of their schemes. You can't help but wonder what this combination of confidence, nerve, and ambition could accomplish in more legitimate pursuits.

    The nervy bastard at the center of The Billionaire's Vinegar is Hardy Rodenstock, a self-made wine connoisseur/dealer from Germany who ascended to the top of the rare wine market in the 80s via some incredible "finds" of rare vintages. Chief among these finds was a cache of rare bottles dating from the late 1700s, each engraved "Th:J." implying that they once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

    Despite the fact that questions are raised about the bottles' authenticity (from historical sources outside the wine industry/culture) from the beginning, the Forbes family paid $156,000 for a single bottle of "Jefferson wine" to be displayed along with other Jeffersonian artifacts owned by the family. This purchase sent the market for rare wines into the stratosphere.

    Rodenstock was everywhere after this, with a seemingly never-ending supply of the rarest wines, a prickly personality, and a shady background.

    Wallace does an excellent job setting up the culture of folks who buy and drink rare wines and how that culture changed once the paradigm shifted from buying rare wines to drink to buying rare wines as an investment or a way to show off (predictably, this vulgarization occurs once the Americans really get involved). He also does an excellent job showing how snobbery, pride, and tradition made supposed experts willfully blind to the idea of fraud.

    Definitive answers are hard to come by in books like this; it's difficult to test the wine without ruining it, and no one who's paid an insane amount for a bottle of wine wants to be proved a fool. Still, the circumstantial evidence of fraud is pretty clear, meaning many very, very wealthy people spent outrageous amounts of money for wine not nearly as old or rare as what they thought.

    And maybe it makes me a bad person, but it's hard not to take some small measure of satisfaction in snobby rich folks looking like fools.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An entertaining read about the world of wine collecting. At its heart is a ridiculously expensive bottle of wine purported to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great page-turner about the forgery of rare wines, this book has already been optioned by the movie industry.
    ~Stephanie
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's amazing what not reading the back of a book will do for your experience of reading the book. I didn't read the back of this book, so I wasn't expecting the ultimate outcome until I was well in. As tale about the wine culture over the last 30 years and delving into a few specific bottles it succeeds very well. The 50 pages before the last 50 pages dragged a little but they helped to tie the story together. I definitely recommend it for fans of wine and fans of micro-histories.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fascinating world but so irrelevant and too long for the subject
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book started slowly and was rather dry, however as the main theme of the book emerged it was apparent that the dry backstory was necessary information. Overall, the book was a fascinating look into the world of old vintage wines and the people who collect and trade them.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    more detail than I ever wanted to know!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed the book, right until the very last chapter. I understand that maybe there was no further action, but the book just ended abruptly. Very disappointing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book gives the reader a glimpse into the close world of antique wines and the collectors who covet them. In 1985 a very unusual find of an 1787 Lafitte wine with initials etched into the bottle that suggest it was owned by Thomas Jefferson, was put up for auction at Christie's and sold for a record price of$156,000 by Kip Forbes, son of Malcolm Forbes. This was the first of many extraordinary bottles of wine that were discovered and sold and for twenty years, millions of dollars were spent on rare bottles. One of the major discoverers of these wines was a German man named Hardy Rodenstock who said that they came from the cellar of a Venezuelan collector. Soon, like the boy who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes, people came to the realization that they had been duped and had bought many forged bottles of wine.Since international law makes it difficult to nail an international swindler, it seems that he got away with it but the story of how so many experts and connoisseurs were fooled for such a long time is a lesson to be learned.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm more a beer-and-shot guy, so my love of this book took me completely by surprise. The story starts with the auction of a $170,000 bottle of wine --a 1787 Laffite (the right vintage, the right chateaux) that had supposedly been owned by Thomas Jefferson-- and effortlessly takes the reader through a long trail of fascinating subjects: Jefferson's life in France; the science of wine, the bacchanalian proclivities of the ultra-rich (and oft-despicable) wine collectors; mini-histories of the high-end auction houses; the tricks of artifact forgery… All of this entwined in a nice bit of real-life whodunit (if it was indeed dun). A juicy piece of narrative non-fiction rife with jaw-dropping anecdotes and revelations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very interesting examination of the very high-end rare wine market, the possibility of fakes in the bottles & wines and what people with too much money do to impress others. Enjoyed reading it greatly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Billionaire’s Vinegar is, at its heart, an account of the record breaking, 1985 auction of the oldest, most famous bottle of existing wine, a 1787 Chateau Lafite, reputedly purchased and owned at one time by Thomas Jefferson. From this event, the author examines the world of wine collecting, wine auctions and chicanery inherent in both.While the ’87 Lafite is the basis for the story, the chief protagonists are Christie’s director of wines, Michael Broadbent, an oenophile who founded the auction house’s wine department and scoured cellars around the globe to locate and identify what would become the stars of future auctions; and a German fellow by the name of Hardy Rodenstock. Playing supporting roles are obscenely rich wine collectors, connoisseurs and wine critics around the globe who supplied, critiqued and vied for Christie’s offerings. Of course, where you have vast sums of money competing for rare collectibles, you can be sure to find rampant fraud and deceit. Wine collecting is no exception.Rodenstock (an alias, it turns out) ostensibly acquired a trove of “Jefferson bottles” and subsequently sold them to wealthy collectors around the world. From the beginning, the provenance of the bottles was suspect, but inasmuch as virtually everyone involved stood to profit from their validity, the numerous indicators of fraud were conveniently swept aside. Thrown into the limelight by his promotion of the find, Rodenstock went on a twenty year run of fabricating and marketing any number of highly prized offerings, in the process becoming something of a celebrity in the world of wine collecting.Finally, over time, the indicators of fraud became too numerous and glaring to ignore; such things as old wines in containers of a size not used for the vintage being sold, wine labels utilizing glues not in existence when the wine was purportedly bottled, bottle etchings made by dental drilling equipment. Even in the face of such circumstances, the charade continued for many years, as many of the players, due to reputations at stake (such as Broadbent), civil and criminal liability (such as Rodenstock and numerous dealers) and loss of investment (on the part of the hundreds of collectors who had paid absurd prices for Rodenstock’s fraudulent offerings), refused to publicly disavow the rare collectibles.This book is an excellent look, not only at the world of rare wines and other such collectibles, but into human nature and the herd mentality that allows such rampant fraud and deceit to occur and flourish, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of its existence.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a non-fiction book about the world of rare and old wines. Basically, it focuses on one particular bottle, a 1787 bottle of Lafite supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. It was auctioned by Christie's for $156,000 to the Forbes family. The book then delves into the society of old-wine drinkers and the authenticity of the wines. There is no definite conclusion on how to verify authenticity. The author makes his opinion on the authenticity of the bottle in question fairly clear. As a wine lover this was a really interesting book to read. It's also an interesting look at the spending habits of the extremely rich. There is a lot of information about the most famous French vineyards and about the history of Thomas Jefferson's love of wine. Very enjoyable.