Awards

• Winner of Gourmand World Cookbook Awards (USA Only) (Wine History) 2008

Overview

In 1985 a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson was sold for the sum of $156,000. Benjamin Wallace goes on the trail of this most expensive of wines, and meets along the way Nazis, conspiracies and millionaires.

Full Product Details

9780307338778

Table of Contents

Reviews

Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale....as delicious as a true vintage Lafite. <br>-- Business Week <br> Splendid...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...Ripe for Hollywood. <br>-- USA Today <br> This is a gripping story, expertly handled by Benjamin Wallace who writes with wit and verve, drawing the reader into a subculture strewn with eccentrics and monomaniacs...Full of detail that will delight wine lovers. It will also appeal to anyone who merely savours a great tale, well told. <br>-- The Economist <br> A page-turner...What makes Wallace's book worth reading is the way he fleshes out the tale with entertaining digressions into Jefferson's wine adventures, how to fake wines (who knew a shotgun blast could make a bottle look old?) and dead-on portraits of several major wine personalities who intersected unhappily with the wines. <br>-- Bloomberg <br> Wallace's depiction of rabid oenophiles staging almost decadent events to swill rare wine, knowingly depleting the reserves, are as much fun as the mystery. <br>-- The New York Daily News <br> A riveting wine history, wine mystery, and more. <br>--Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine <br> For anyone with at least a curiosity about precious old wines and the love of a good story, this well-crafted piece of journalism may prove as intriguing and enjoyable as a fine old Bordeaux. <br>-- Seattle Times <br> The season's wine reading cannot get off to a betterstart than with The Billionaire's Vinegar, one of the rare books on wine that transcends the genre ...Though the story is the collector's world, the subject is also greed and how it can contort reality to fit one's desires. It's been optioned for Hollywood. I hope the movie's as good as the book. <br>--Eric Asimov, The Pour, New York Times <br> It is the fine details--the bouquet, the body, the notes, the finish--that make this book such a lasting pleasure, to be savored and remembered long after the last page is turned. Ben Wallace has told a splendid story just wonderfully, his touch light and deft, his instinct pitch-perfect. Of all the marvelous legends of the wine trade, this curiously unforgettable saga most amply deserves the appellation: a classic. <br>--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and A Crack in the Edge of the World <br> The Billionaire's Vinegar is the ultimate page-turner. Written with literary intelligence, it has a cast of characters like something out Fawlty Towers meets The Departed. It takes you into a subculture so deep and delicious, you can almost taste the wine that turns so many seemingly rational people into madmen. It is superb nonfiction. <br>--Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale....as delicious as a true vintage Lafite. -- Business Week Splendid...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...Ripe for Hollywood. -- USA Today This is a gripping story, expertly handled by Benjamin Wallace who writes with wit and verve, drawing the reader into a subculture strewn with eccentrics and monomaniacs...Full of detail that will delight wine lovers. It will also appeal to anyone who merely savours a great tale, well told. -- The Economist A page-turner...What makes Wallace's book worth reading is the way he fleshes out the tale with entertaining digressions into Jefferson's wine adventures, how to fake wines (who knew a shotgun blast could make a bottle look old?) and dead-on portraits of several major wine personalities who intersected unhappily with the wines. -- Bloomberg Wallace's depiction of rabid oenophiles staging almost decadent events to swill rare wine, knowingly depleting the reserves, are as much fun as the mystery. -- The New York Daily News A riveting wine history, wine mystery, and more. --Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine For anyone with at least a curiosity about precious old wines and the love of a good story, this well-crafted piece of journalism may prove as intriguing and enjoyable as a fine old Bordeaux. -- Seattle Times The season's wine reading cannot get off to a better start than with The Billionaire's Vinegar, one of the rare books on wine that transcends the genre ...Though the story is the collector's world, the subject is also greed and how it can contort reality to fit one's desires. It's been optioned for Hollywood. I hope t Splendid...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...Ripe for Hollywood. -- USA Today This is a gripping story, expertly handled by Benjamin Wallace who writes with wit and verve, drawing the reader into a subculture strewn with eccentrics and monomaniacs...Full of detail that will delight wine lovers. It will also appeal to anyone who merely savours a great tale, well told. -- The Economist A page-turner...What makes Wallace's book worth reading is the way he fleshes out the tale with entertaining digressions into Jefferson's wine adventures, how to fake wines (who knew a shotgun blast could make a bottle look old?) and dead-on portraits of several major wine personalities who intersected unhappily with the wines. -- Bloomberg Wallace's depiction of rabid oenophiles staging almost decadent events to swill rare wine, knowingly depleting the reserves, are as much fun as the mystery. -- The New York Daily News A riveting wine history, wine mystery, and more. --Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine For anyone with at least a curiosity about precious old wines and the love of a good story, this well-crafted piece of journalism may prove as intriguing and enjoyable as a fine old Bordeaux. -- Seattle Times It is the fine details--the bouquet, the body, the notes, the finish--that make this book such a lasting pleasure, to be savored and remembered long after the last page is turned. BenWallace has told a splendid story just wonderfully, his touch light and deft, his instinct pitch-perfect. Of all the marvelous legends of the wine trade, this curiously unforgettable saga most amply deserves the appellation: a classic. --Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and A Crack in the Edge of the World The Billionaire's Vinegar is the ultimate page-turner. Written with literary intelligence, it has a cast of characters like something out Fawlty Towers meets The Departed. It takes you into a subculture so deep and delicious, you can almost taste the wine that turns so many seemingly rational people into madmen. It is superb nonfiction. --Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights It is the fine details--the bouquet, the body, the notes, the finish--that make this book such a lasting pleasure, to be savored and remembered long after the last page is turned. Ben Wallace has told a splendid story just wonderfully, his touch light and deft, his instinct pitch-perfect. Of all the marvelous legends of the wine trade, this curiously unforgettable saga most amply deserves the appellation: a classic. --Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and A Crack in the Edge of the World The Billionaire's Vinegar is the ultimate page-turner. Written with literary intelligence, it has a cast of characters like something out Fawlty Towers meets The Departed. It takes you into a subculture so deep and delicious, you can almost taste the wine that turns so many seemingly rational people into madmen. It is superb nonfiction. --Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

Author Information

"BENJAMIN WALLACE has written for ""GQ, Food & Wine,"" and ""Philadelphia,"" where he was the executive editor. He lives in Brooklyn."

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