In September my brother and I celebrated my 24th birthday by going to see The Informant!, whose use of the most ridiculous punctuation mark in the title attracted me. Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a real life former vice president of an agri-business company accused of price-fixing. It is not until the last 30 minutes of the movie that Whitacre’s chronic lying is exposed definitively, and the plot spins into a surprisingly different narrative. A decent movie, but the highlight of my birthday was the dinner at Petros Greek Restaurant. Tasty food, and good wine.
Around the same time, I bought a copy of Benjamin Wallace’s The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine. The titular bottle, a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, sold at Christie’s for a record price of $156,000 because it was owned by Thomas Jefferson. That’s what the man who consigned the bottle to Christie’s said, at least. Workers were demolishing a house in Paris in 1985 when they discovered a secret room filled with old bottles of wine, and the owner of the house sold the bottles to one of the foremost wine collectors and merchants in the world. After some research, Hardy Rodestock, the merchant, determined the inscribed initials, “Th. J.” meant the 198-year-old bottle was owned by Thomas Jefferson. Armed with this bottle, and others with the same initials, Rodenstock consigned the bottle to Christie’s Rare Wine auctioneer, Michael Broadbent.
The bottle was sold to Malcolm Forbes in December of that year, amid much fanfare. Debate over the bottle’s provenance surfaced, even before the sale, especially from Monticello. The Founding Father’s estate drew attention to the initials on the bottle, stating Jefferson abbreviated his name with different punctuation. Wine experts questioned the bottle, cork, label, ullage (the change of the distance between the cork and the top of the bottled wine) and everything else they could think of. Many experts called for Lafite, the bottle’s Chateau, to test one of Rodestock’s other bottles, and Lafite would have its chance later. Rodenstock’s resolve never faultered, despite frequently surfacing inconsistencies regarding the bottles’ discovery and, even, number.
Wallace’s book follows the debate behind the Jefferson bottles and some of Rodenstock’s other amazing discoveries. The focus of the last chapters shift from the bottles of wine to the man who discovered them. The German fine wine collector’s credibility shatters, just as Damon’s Mark Whitacre. We discover his real name is Meinhard Goerke, a man who formerly worked in the music industry. After many high priced fine wine sales, Rodenstock bought many properties in Europe, including an apartment in Munich. The Rodenstocks/Goerkes shared a wall with their landlord, Andreas Klein. Klein often heard through the shared wall the sounds of Rodenstock hammering wood, but chalked it up to the work of a hobbyist. When Klein’s and Rodenstock’s shared attic developed a mold problem, the neighbors began a dialogue that led to the two men meeting in court. Klein ultimately won, and the Rodenstocks moved out in 2005.
Klein went into the basesment after his former tenants left, and found, according to Wallace:
“In one corner of a small room, he found a stack of what appeared to be unused wine labels, with no type on them, as well as a pile of old-looking corks. In the cellar’s bigger room, Klein found a few dozen empty wine bottles, and something stranger: Rodenstock had laid a carpet down on the concrete floor, and on top of the carpet was a large mound of dirt (with a dead frog in it); the carpet and the dirt were covered in mold… The Kleins thought back to all those times they had heard the sound of hammering. Though they couldn’t prove anything, Andreas Klein would later learn about Bill Koch’s suit from a German tabloid and write that upon seeing the cellar, ‘we were absolutely sure that he prepared the bottles in the smaller room and made them look older in the bigger room. It was too obvious.’”
The Billionaire’s Vinegar continues, documenting the other lawsuits brought against Rodenstock, most of which are outstanding. The book is a fun read for those who appreciate stories about con artists, like The Informant! or Catch Me If You Can. I read it again after I came across the December 15th issue of The Wine Spectator; the cover was dominated by Bill Koch, another man seeking legal action against Rodenstock, and one of the most vocal. Koch, whose name is often spelled phonetically like the soft drink, holds a bottle of 1921 Chateau Petrus Pomerol beside his quote, “I plan to put people in jail.” The magazine devotes itself to counterfeits this issue (as well as discussing Spanish wines, a new fascination of mine), and I have to admit, I am curious.
I plan to write more blog entries on the issue of wine fraud in the future; later this week, I want to read the Spectator article and hopefully research the wine counterfeit business at large. The intrigue is too much to pass up.
Oh, and $156,000 for a bottle of wine?
Visit The Wine Spectator online:
http://www.winespectator.com/
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