The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace

As well as the two Yquems consumed in 1985, two bottles (17 Lafite) were sold privately to Rodenstock’s collector friend Hans- Peter Frericks the same year. Wallace traces the fate of the various Jefferson bottles. Wallace claims that, at the time of the discovery, Rodenstock told one of his collector friends that the bottles belonged to Jefferson Rodenstock later claimed that it was Yquem’s Alexandre de Lur-Saluces who first pointed out the connection between “Th.J” and Jefferson. Two dozen of these bottles were engraved with the initials “Th.J” and were from the 17 vintages, including Lafite, Margaux, Yquem, and Branne-Mouton. It was a cache of around 100 bottles that had been walled up in a Parisian cellar.

In 1985 Rodenstock made his greatest find yet. Broadbent was a frequent attendee, and Jancis Robinson MW and Robert Parker have written up Rodenstock events. Initially involving a small circle of like-minded collectors, his tastings grew into extravagant events at which numerous old, soughtafter bottles were opened-and these proceedings were often legitimized by the presence of wine-trade luminaries. The flamboyant Rodenstock, a noted wine collector, had developed something of a reputation for sniffing down caches of old, rare wine. Is it possible that some of Jefferson’s wine remained in Paris, only to be unearthed some 200 years later? Jefferson was called back to the USA in 1789, however, to serve as Secretary of State, and in the chaos of the French Revolution some of the wine he ordered went missing. Then, in May of that year, he ordered 125 bottles of Haut-Brion.

He placed the order directly because he was smart enough to realize that it was the only way to avoid the very real risk of adulteration at the hands of wine merchants. These are still at Monticello, the Jefferson museum in Virginia.) For example, in February 1788, he ordered 250 bottles of Lafite.

(We know a lot about this side of his life because he recorded, in an obsessive fashion, almost every detail, however mundane, in his journals. As American minister to France, Thomas Jefferson (later third president of the USA) had indulged his love of fine wine by buying reasonable quantities of top claret. Rodenstock is at the heart of this story because it is he who discovered the “Jefferson” bottles in Paris in 1985.

The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace