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The Billionaire's Vinegar

Author: Benjamin Wallace

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2009-04-14

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307338789

The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it. The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. “Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek

In Vino Duplicitas

Author: Peter Hellman

Publisher: The Experiment

Published: 2017-07-31

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1615193936

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As seen on ABC’s The Con, an “engrossing account of wine fraud and forgery” that duped some of the biggest names in the elite world of wine collecting (Wall Street Journal) In 2002, Rudy Kurniawan, an unknown twentysomething, burst into the privileged world of ultrafine wines. Blessed with a virtuoso palate, and with a seemingly limitless supply of coveted bottles, Kurniawan quickly became the leading purveyor of rare wines to the American elite. But in April 2008, at a New York auction house, dozens of Kurniawan's trophy bottles were abruptly pulled from sale. Journalist Peter Hellman was there, and he began to investigate: Were the bottles fake? Were there others? And was Kurniawan himself duped by forgery...or had he ensnared the world's top winemakers, sellers, and drinkers in a web of deceit?

A Wine Journey Along the Russian River

Author: Steve Heimoff

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005-09

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0520239857

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In this travelogue of the Russian River area's geology and history as it pertains to winemaking in several Sonoma County appellations, Heimoff profiles the key players and winemakers who have established the region's reputation for excellent wine.

Wine and War

Author: Donald Kladstrup

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2002-04-30

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0767904486

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The remarkable untold story of France’s courageous, clever vinters who protected and rescued the country’s most treasured commodity from German plunder during World War II. "To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine." –Claude Terrail, owner, Restaurant La Tour d’Argent In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown–until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them. Wine and War illuminates a compelling, little-known chapter of history, and stands as a tribute to extraordinary individuals who waged a battle that, in a very real way, saved the spirit of France.

Stalin's Wine Cellar

Author: John Baker

Publisher: Random House Australia

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1761043668

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The adventure of a lifetime to buy Stalin's secret multimillion dollar wine cellar located in Georgia; it is the Raiders of the Lost Ark of wine. In the late 1990s, John Baker was known as a purveyor of quality rare and old wines. He was the perfect person for an occasional business partner to approach with a mysterious wine list that was different to anything John, or his second-in-command, Kevin Hopko, had ever come across. The list was discovered to be a comprehensive catalogue of the wine collection of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. The wine had become the property of the state after the Russian Revolution of 1918, during which Nicholas and his entire family were executed. Now owned by Stalin, the wine was discreetly removed to a remote Georgian winery when Stalin was concerned the advancing Nazi army might overrun Russia. Half a century later, the wine was rumoured to be hidden underground and off any known map. John and Kevin embarked on an audacious, colourful and potentially dangerous journey to Georgia to discover if the wines actually existed; if the bottles were authentic and whether the entire collection could be bought and transported to a major London auction house for sale. Stalin's Wine Cellar is a wild, sometimes rough ride through the glamorous world of high-end wine.

Sonoma Wine and the Story of Buena Vista

Author: Charles L. Sullivan

Publisher: Board and Bench Publishing

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1935879847

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The beginning of history for California wine starts with 17th-century , but the industry and commercial powerhouse that commands 60 percent of the United States market was birthed 200 years later, the product of a Hungarian aristocrat, European grapes, and the Sonoma Valley. In this groundbreaking book by historian and bestselling author Charles L. Sullivan, the untold history of Sonoma wine serves as backdrop to the turbulent story of California s first commercial winery, Buena Vista, from its founding by brilliant but quixotic Agoston Haraszthy, through phyloxera plague and the dry years of prohibition to its present-day market prominence. Sonoma Wine and the Story of Buena Vista is a scholarly study of two centuries of California wine history, told in a riveting narrative that will engage and delight.

Thomas Jefferson on Wine

Author: John R. Hailman

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 9781578068418

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A connoisseur's compendium of a great American's passion for fine wine

The Wild Vine

Author: Todd Kliman

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0307409376

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A rich romp through untold American history featuring fabulous characters, The Wild Vine is the tale of a little-known American grape that rocked the fine-wine world of the nineteenth century and is poised to do so again today. Author Todd Kliman sets out on an epic quest to unravel the mystery behind Norton, a grape used to make a Missouri wine that claimed a prestigious gold medal at an international exhibition in Vienna in 1873. At a time when the vineyards of France were being ravaged by phylloxera, this grape seemed to promise a bright future for a truly American brand of wine-making, earthy and wild. And then Norton all but vanished. What happened? The narrative begins more than a hundred years before California wines were thought to have put America on the map as a wine-making nation and weaves together the lives of a fascinating cast of renegades. We encounter the suicidal Dr. Daniel Norton, tinkering in his experimental garden in 1820s Richmond, Virginia. Half on purpose and half by chance, he creates a hybrid grape that can withstand the harsh New World climate and produce good, drinkable wine, thus succeeding where so many others had failed so fantastically before, from the Jamestown colonists to Thomas Jefferson himself. Thanks to an influential Long Island, New York, seed catalog, the grape moves west, where it is picked up in Missouri by German immigrants who craft the historic 1873 bottling. Prohibition sees these vineyards burned to the ground by government order, but bootleggers keep the grape alive in hidden backwoods plots. Generations later, retired Air Force pilot Dennis Horton, who grew up playing in the abandoned wine caves of the very winery that produced the 1873 Norton, brings cuttings of the grape back home to Virginia. Here, dot-com-millionaire-turned-vintner Jenni McCloud, on an improbable journey of her own, becomes Norton’s ultimate champion, deciding, against all odds, to stake her entire reputation on the outsider grape. Brilliant and provocative, The Wild Vine shares with readers a great American secret, resuscitating the Norton grape and its elusive, inky drink and forever changing the way we look at wine, America, and long-cherished notions of identity and reinvention.

Shadows in the Vineyard

Author: Maximillian Potter

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2014-07-29

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1455516082

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Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014 Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romanée-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine. In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison-a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder-unless he paid a one million euro ransom. Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal miscalculation and the crime shocked this fabled region of France. The sinister story that Vanity Fair journalist Maximillian Potter uncovered would lead to a sting operation by some of France's top detectives, the primary suspect's suicide, and a dramatic investigation. This botanical crime threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding the world's greatest wine. SHADOWS IN THE VINEYARD takes us deep into a captivating world full of fascinating characters, small-town French politics, an unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the land that runs through it.

Vintage Port

Author: James Suckling

Publisher: Sterling Publishing (NY)

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780918076809

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