The Billionaire's Vinegar

The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

By: Benjamin Wallace

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

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 nonfiction.

©2008 Benjamin Wallace (P)2008 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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)
"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 Bit Disappointing

Would you consider the audio edition of The Billionaire's Vinegar to be better than the print version?

No

Any additional comments?

Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I came away feeling like the book had dragged at times and my interest waned - which rarely happens when listening to an audio book. I generally reserve history books for print reading and indulge more of my guilty pleasures like Stephen King with audio or very long novels for audio. Maybe I should have went for the print version as opposed to audio. I don't think the narrator injected any energy either. He wasn't bad, just not lively.

Could barely put it down

A fascinating glimpse into the world of high-end wine. If you have doubted the sanity of spending big money on wine - my take is that you are right! But it’s a colorful world. The research, as far as I can tell, is excellent and the writing equally good. Very diverting.

Not just for enophiles

Very interesting and often jaw-dropping account of how the uber-rich live. I may not be able to relate to the lives of the tiny and rarified circle of people (Dodi al-Fayed, Malcom Forbes,et al) who can afford to pay $100,000+ for one bottle of wine, or who buy entire houses to hold their rare wine collections, or who hold "vertical winetastings" lasting days at which a succession of vintages of the same vineyard (from the 1700s through the early 1900s) are tasted, but I can nevertheless savor their smashed hubris when their "investments" in antique wines turns out to be . . . just a bunch of vinegar. Side trips in the narrative explaining Thomas Jefferson's self-education in the subtleties of the fermented grape, his mania for detailed bookkeeping, and the business of the auctionhouses that sell antique wines will fascinate not just enophiles, but anyone with a passing interest in history and an appreciation for ironic payback.

Enjoy with a glass of red

All the great investigations of the Serial podcast, just more uniformly narrated.

Enjoyed this after the Netflix documentary, Sour Grapes. On a similar topic.

Excellent! Fantastic storytelling

What a delight to listen to! I finished it so quickly, as the writing style and narrator worked well together, as if blended like a fine wine. Insightful sliver of the rich wine-collectors world but also laden with many takeaways the average wine drinker can appreciate. I recommend for anyone who is reading Th synopsis and debating whether to sample. Go ahead, drink it in!

Ends abruptly but good overall

book ends abruptly with no closure on story but overall good book to hear. I enjoyed it, only 5 hour listen or so.

The fascinating business of vintage wines

This is a book which is entertaining and gives an insight into a world most people don't know or probably can't afford to know - the buying and selling of wines at extraordinary prices. Like every business where the price paid is not related to intrinsic value, the sophisticated fraudster finds an opportunity.

Excellent Tale, Poor Abridging

Narrator is superb.

Underlying book material is highly fascinating, with many subplots and a well-researched storyline.

The momentum of the tale lurches and then vanishes towards the end due to poor editing. I have not read the book, but cannot fathom that it is so richly enveloping for 90% of the text and then evaporates at the end.

Worth a re-edit and re-release.

Fun

Fun listen!!y. I have increased my knowledge of wine and will stick with whiskey!!

great book, very interesting story. Ending perfect

performance was somewhat stilted, but it is no doubt hard to read so many different names and places. nevertheless the story is really quite gripping, and the way it plays out eventually unfolds like a detective novel towards the end. this book was well worth the listen and quite entertaining