In the opening pages of “The Billionaire’s Vinegar,” Benjamin Wallace writes of British auctioneer Michael Broadbent’s sense of awe at the bottle of wine he was about to put on the block. “Even after all these years, he still found it bracingly creative to conjure excitement out of a heap of dirty old bottles. No matter how many of them the fifty-eight-year-old Broadbent might see, he retained his boyish sense of marvel at the longevity of wine. Inert antiques were all very well, but there was magic in old wine - and wonderful alchemy in something that could live and change for two hundred years and still be drinkable.”
And the bottle of wine the auctioneer was about to offer was magical beyond words. “Broadbent had never sold anything quite like this before … it was the oldest authenticated vintage red wine ever to come up for auction at Christie’s. And that was the least of its merits. The bottle was engraved with the initials ’Th.J.’ As Broadbent had described it in the auction catalog, ’Th.J. are the initials of Thomas Jefferson.’ Almost miraculously, the bottle was full of wine and appeared to have survived two centuries intact.”
How had the auctioneer come upon such a bottle of wine? How had he come upon the good fortune to have met one Hardy Rodenstock, the German collector who had passed it on to Christie’s? Where had Rodenstock found the wine?
According to Rodenstock, Mr. Wallace writes, “In the spring of 1985 workers tearing down a house in Paris had broken through a false wall in the basement and happened upon a hidden cache of extremely old wines. The Lafite, inscribed with the initials of the Founding Father, who had lived in Paris from 1784 to 1789 and was the foremost American wine connoisseur of his day, had been among them.”
For readers, the lineup of a legendary auction house, a German wine collector, a fake facade and a very old bottle of wine is just the scaffolding of a good story. Add a billionaire buyer and the highest price ever paid for a bottle of wine and you have drama. Add to that a likely crime and you have a book. Mr. Wallace, who has written for GQ, Food & Wine and Philadelphia, figured this out and delivered in spades. Hollywood is already knocking.
So it was that in 1985, a 1787 handblown, dark-green glass bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux was sold to Malcolm Forbes’ son (on his father’s behalf) for $156,000. While Michael Broadbent, the very embodiment of “British cool” made the sale possible for Christie’s, it is the mysterious Hardy Rodenstock who steals the show. From early on, readers understand that there is more than meets the eye with this cipher of a man. Does he have information tying the bottle to rumors of a Nazi connection? Why is he so quiet about the precise location of the cellar?
Mr. Wallace answers questions raised about Rodenstock and his remarkable find with a narrative that moves slowly and gracefully through lively and interesting information. Mr. Wallace seems to consciously take his time revealing what he knows, much like someone tasting a fine wine. There is no rush or urgency. Just a tale that oenophiles, history buffs and ordinary wine lovers alike will savor.
There are the memorable characters: the bicycle-riding Broadbent who has a habit of speaking of wine as if it were a woman; Serena Sutcliffe, his Sotheby’s rival of whom he said, “Of course, I hate her … I find her totally pretentious”; Bill Koch, the Palm Beach businessman determined to unravel the truth about Rodenstock and his Jefferson bottles and an array of contemporary moguls presented with flair. Also, one must not leave out the ample glimpses of historical figures such as Franklin and Jefferson that Mr. Wallace calls forth to give context and clarity to his narrative.
Readers learn that before the wine was offered, Mr. Broadbent conferred with Christie’s glass experts, who confirmed that both the bottle and the engraving were cast in the 18th-century French style. Readers are also reminded that Jefferson served as America’s minister to France between 1785 and the outbreak of the French Revolution and had developed a fondness for French wine. When he returned to America, he continued to order large quantities of Bordeaux for himself and for George Washington.
Mr. Wallace writes: “Jefferson was steadfast in promoting his favorite beverage. He lobbied for lower tariffs on wine not only for selfish reasons, but ostensibly because he believed in its healthful and even moderating qualities. ’No nation is drunken where wine is cheap,’ he wrote once, alluding to the rampant abuse of whiskey he saw around him, ’and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.’ He made little headway in this campaign with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who regarded Jefferson as a fop and wine as a luxury.”
Mr. Wallace shows how after the auction in which the Forbes sale was made, interest in other bottles of Jefferson wine increased. The publisher of Wine Spectator, who failed in a bid in the first auction, later bought a bottle through Christie’s and a businessman of Middle Eastern origins thought to be Dodi Fayed, bought another.
But it was after a purchase by Bill Koch, the rich Palm Beach businessman, that the mystery of the Jefferson bottles began to unravel. In 2005, when he was about to offer his wine to an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a member of Koch’s staff began looking into the provenance of the Jefferson bottles. They contacted the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and learned to their horror that the bottles could not be substantiated as belonging to Jefferson.
It would be unfair to explicate the collapse of the mystery in its entirety. Readers should embark on the merry journey of discovery on their own. But on this holiday weekend it might be worth noting that Thomas Jefferson, one of our most revered Founders, “in his first year of office, spent $2,800 of his $25,000 salary on wine.” This weekend, raise a glass in his memory and to this gem of a book that honors him.
THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR
By Benjamin Wallace
Crown, $25.95, 319 pages
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