The Billionaire’s Vinegar

Posted on | June 27, 2008

Subtitled: the mystery of the world’s most expensive bottle of wine.

This was a bottle of wine which was sold at auction some 25 years ago: Château Lafite 1787. Its authenticity is eventually brought into question. The bottle sold for just over $156,000 to the magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes, outbidding Wine Spectator publisher Marvin Shanken. To put this into context a case (12 bottles) of 1961 Petrus recently sold for $102,850 (Sotheby’s Aulden Cellars, 2008).

Billionaire’s Vinegar is a book you will enjoy reading; wine-lover or not but I don’t much care for the title of this book. Explicit oxymorons don’t work in my view and both ‘billionaire’ and ‘vinegar’ are harsh unattractive words with unpleasant connotations. Millionaire is altogether more pleasing and less extravagant sounding. Vinegar is ambiguous in this context. Clearly confusing.

Billionaire’s Vinegar concentrates on mostly old bottles of Château Lafite and Château d’Yquem which purport to have belonged to one of the founding fathers of modern America, Thomas Jefferson, a man who travelled the world learning about and enjoying fine wines wherever he went. A bottle of Château Lafite, engraved with his initials (Th. J) was sold at auction (Christie’s) in 1985 for the record price of $156,000 to the ‘billionaire’ publisher Malcolm Forbes. This book doesn’t tell us why he and others like him are motivated to purchase a wine for such a price when, apart from its dubious provenance, it would likely be undrinkable. Such was the heat (both literally and metaphorically) that the auctioneer, the person who staked his reputation on the validity of the lot, cooled his feet in a bucket of cold water, unseen by the roomful of bidders. No one stood up to gainsay the authenticity of the bottle then even if they doubted it. One wonders why not.

The book is balanced and well-researched. Wallace and others have been struck by similarities to another great forgery in the late 20th century, that of the Hitler Diaries. Forgers themselves are often more knowledgeable than the experts they fool. Much to everyone’s chagrin they make a mockery of valuers, historians, and connoisseurs. The world of fine wine at this level is rarefied. Hardy Rodenstock, who is described as being behind many apparently fake old bottles, has also conned most of the major wine critics and commentators at one time or another - Parker, Broadbent, Shanken, Sutcliffe, Robinson all included. Just as with the Hitler Diaries there are those who become caught up in the rush of excitement desiring to give the public what they want. A bottle of wine belonging to Thomas Jefferson is so significant it becomes impossible to deny. Objectivity gives way to fantasy which is not a totally unworthy sentiment when the only true reaction to a great bottle of wine is an emotional one. But in my view Christie’s auction house never possessed the negligent intentions that Rupert Murdoch lent to the publication of the Hitler Diaries. Murdoch never cared whether they were real or not.

Mr Wallace travelled the world to interview participants in this drama and has worked hard to assemble the proof or even lack of proof for authenticating the wine under review. It’s too bad his publishers didn’t give him the space to add an index and even a few appendices.

Wallace writes well and sympathetically. Some of the crueller anecdotes concerning well-known wine industry commentators are related as if they are the diagnosis of a benign, disinterested, clinical psychiatrist referring to his pschyopathic patient. A good novel is about characterisation, style, and evocation. Not totally dissimilar to a good wine. Content and plot are often secondary. Not here: but then this is no novel. Something one has to remind oneself of again and again. Indeed, characterising the protagonists in this book would be hard — they are bottles of wine. There are so few of them, and they are so expensive, that very few people will have had, or will ever have the opportunity to taste them. All very esoteric.

As one nears the end of the book it’s hard to feel any real sympathy for the aggrieved parties. So long as you need a scientist to carbon date your wine to prove its authenticity, you might as well drink Coke. The ultimate irony is that many of these Jefferson bottles which will rarely be drunk were portrayed as belonging to an historic and highly knowledgeable wine enthusiast who ended his days drinking table wine and enjoying it just as much. I suggest Messrs Koch and the others do the same.

Hardy Rodenstock, the man at the centre of the scandal, seems to have used most of his friends at one time or another for no other purpose than legitimising his wine collection. It is a truly sad picture of a person so intent upon becoming part of a world which he aspired to that he was prepared to sacrifice and even betray these friendships for a seat at the table. His talents, enthusiasm and knowledge were already enough for this and it reminds me of the lone yachtsman Donald Crowhurst who faked his passage around the world in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race - a single-handed round the world yacht race. To do so he had to fake his yacht’s position on a regular basis which he could only do by working back from a particular grid position on a chart. A mathematical exercise which would have daunted even a university professor. He had already accomplished more than most yachtsman do in a lifetime and broken several records before he slowly went out of his mind from the stress, loneliness and alienation he felt all those thousands of miles from home. Paradoxically the possibility that his forgery would lead him to win the race only increased his anxiety and shortly after his last log entry he jumped into the sea and was never seen again.

Hardy Rodenstock has a lot of explaining to do - mostly to his friends.

Review by Fabian Cobb

See this archived Forum post.

The Billionaire’s Vinegar
by Benjamin Wallace
Published by Crown Publishers, New York

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