Although we were being a bit cheeky about the whole “will that $156,000 bottle of wine get you wasted” bit, it turns out it’s actually a valid question. As “The Billionaire’s Vinegar” explains, if you age a wine for that amount of time, it doesn’t improve the drinkability of the bottle; in fact, air usually gets into wine that old, turning it into vinegar, hence Wallace’s title.
For most of us, splurging on a nice bottle of wine might mean spending around $50 (if we’re feeling fancy). But as writer Benjamin Wallace uncovered, for the super-rich, a $50 bottle of wine might as well come from a vending machine.
In his new book, “The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine” (Crown, $24.95), Wallace tracks the story of the “Jefferson bottles,” a caché of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux that was reportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. One of those bottles sold at auction in 1985 for $156,000, making it the most expensive bottle in the world.
But as time went on, disturbing questions arose about the bottle. Was it real? Or a master forgery? And perhaps most pressing — can it still get you drunk?
Through years of research and interviews, Wallace aimed to figure out the answers to at least the first two of those questions. “It was my goal to write a book that would be of general interest for people who like good, true stories. This one just happened to be about wine,” Wallace says. “But it’s really so much more than a wine story.”
He’s not kidding. Wallace tracks the bottles from their “discovery” by a shadowy collector named Hardy Rodenstock all the way through to billionaire Bill Koch, who bought four bottles and is now hellbent on uncovering the truth about their origins. Wallace delves into the art of forgery (it’s not just for handbags and paintings anymore), the rarefied and exclusive world of wine collection, and even throws in a little bit of Thomas Jefferson/early American history.
A self-described “wine philistine” before he started writing the book, Wallace now knows a heck of a lot more about the subject. But that doesn’t mean he’s OK with being the go-to guy about wine questions.
“I get calls from friends who are like, ‘I’m going to go get some Thai. What kind of wine should I buy?’” Wallace laughs. “I want to be like, ‘This book is focused on a 200-year-old Bordeaux. I have no idea what tastes good with Arctic Char.’”