Ellen Crosby: The Bordeaux Betrayal

I am grateful to many people for the time and assistance they gave me while writing this book, but I’m especially indebted to Juanita Swedenburg of Swedenburg Estate Vineyard in Middleburg, Virginia, who, as always, sat me down and schooled me in the business of making wine. Her death in June 2007 was a loss to her family, her many friends, and to the Virginia wine industry where she was known as the gutsy lady who sued the state of New York for the right to ship her wine across state lines. It took five years, but she finally won her battle before the Supreme Court. All of us miss her.

I would like to thank winemaker Rick Tagg for his assistance in answering my questions with patience and humor, and for reading this book as a manuscript. Mary South Hutchison spent many hours discussing foxhunting and steeplechasing with me, loaning me books from her personal library.

James McGrath Morris granted me permission to use his edited version of Thomas Jefferson’s European Travel Diaries, which was published by Isadore Stephanus Publishing on the bicentennial anniversary of Jefferson’s journey through the wine regions of Europe. At Monticello, Gabriele Rausse, winemaker and Associate Director of Gardens and Grounds, spoke to me in Jefferson’s vineyards on a cold March day. Cinder Stanton, Shannon Senior Historian at Monticello, talked to me about Jefferson’s wine purchases for George Washington, as did John Hailman, author of Thomas Jefferson on Wine (University Press of Mississippi, 2006).

Thanks, also, to the following people for their help and expertise: Elizabeth Arrot, Terry Jones, Cheryl Kosmann, André de Nesnera, Katherine Neville, Martina Norelli, Lois Tuohy, and Mike Willis. Special thanks to MPO J.J. Banachoski of the Fairfax County Police Department’s Crash Reconstruction Unit.

As always, I’m grateful to the RLI gang: Donna Andrews, Carla Coupe, Laura Durham, Peggy Hanson, Val Patterson, Noreen Wald Smith, and Sandi Wilson.

At Scribner, my thanks to Anna deVries, Susan Moldow, Whitney Frick, Katie Monaghan, Andrea Bussell, and Heidi Richter. Overdue thanks to Katie Rizzo and Rex Bonomelli. At Pocket I’m indebted to Maggie Crawford and Melissa Gramstad. Finally, I’m grateful for the counsel, wisdom, and friendship of Dominick Abel.

In addition to Jefferson’s original diaries and John Hailman’s book, several other books were particularly helpful in researching and writing this novel: Wine & War by Don and Petie Kladstrup (Broadway Books, 2002), Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson by James M. Gabler (Bacchus Press, 1995), and Wine: The 8,000-Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade by Thomas Pellechia (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006).

For those interested in reading more about the now-famous “Jefferson wines”—bottles of Bordeaux supposedly belonging to Thomas Jefferson discovered behind a bricked-up cellar wall in Paris—I recommend “The Jefferson Bottles” by Patrick Radden Keefe from the September 3 and 10, 2007, issue of The New Yorker and The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace (Crown, 2008).

Ellen Crosby is a former freelance reporter for The Washington Post and was the Moscow correspondent for ABC News Radio. She is the author of Moscow Nights, The Merlot Murders, and The Chardonnay Charade. Crosby lives in Virginia with her family.