Benjamin Wallace - The Billionaire's Vinegar

brass coal scuttle “Jefferson Relic Stolen,” NYT, June 8, 1904.

marble punch bowl “Bryan Has Jefferson Relic,” NYT, December 19, 1904.

In 1930, Jefferson descendants consigned “Descendants Offer Jefferson Relics,” NYT, October 26, 1930.

In the 1940s a New York antiques dealer Provenance recorded in file on 1827 effects sale in special collections of Jefferson Library, courtesy Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.

original wooden models “Jefferson Relics Are Found in Paris,” NYT, February 23, 1947.

The Jefferson table lent by “Provenance of Dining Table,” Maryland Historical Society.

more than fifteen pieces of the original silver “Thomas Jefferson’s Silver,” Antiques, September 1958.

586 bottles left in his cellar Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine, 369.

the curator of Monticello traveled “Monticello Is Seeking Wine Bottles of 1800,” NYT, February 22, 1966.

a shard of glass bearing the seal of Lafite “Monticello Wine Glass Archaeology,” VWGJ, Spring 1988.

16,000-odd letters Sarah N. Randolph, The Domestic Life of Jefferson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1871), 381.

he would swear on his deathbed Letter from TJ to Nicholas Lewis, July 11, 1788, Papers XIII, 342.

couldn’t be expected to “note every vintage and source” “Jefferson’s Paris Wines: Comparing the Questions with the Facts,” VWGJ, Spring 1986.

he had written to John Jay Letter from TJ to John Jay, September 17, 1789, Papers XV, 436–37.

“led astray and raised doubts” “Now it’s the Broadbent 1787,” Decanter, April 1986.

a copy of what appeared to be “Jefferson’s Paris Wines: Comparing the Questions with the Facts,” VWGJ, Spring 1986.

“one’s dubious and unfounded remarks” “The Jefferson Bottles,” The New Yorker, September 3 & 10, 2007.

“Did I hear somebody murmur ‘Piltdown Man’?” “Was it worth it?”, Decanter, March 1986.

“I don’t question its authenticity” “Forbes to Son: You Paid How Much?”, WS, January 1–31, 1986.

Count Alexandre de Lur Saluces came next Colin Parnell, “Authentic Yquem,” Decanter, 1986.

“I cannot imagine anyone in the late eighteenth century” “Lafite Again,” Decanter, July 1986.

“for each year of the life” “157,500 buys wine meant for Jefferson’s cup,” The Times-Picayune, December 6, 1985.

“[turning] over in his grave” Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA), December 7, 1985.

“the major event of the wine season” Christie’s Review of the Season, 1986 (Phaidon/Christie’s), 495.

“the most expensive wine” “Guinness Factfile,” Daily Mail, November 9, 1986.

rundown of the 1980s “80 Greats,” Life (special issue), Fall 1989.

Rodenstock would claim “The World’s Wildest Collector,” WS, December 15, 1988; “Mann, da ist im Gaumen die Hölle los,” Der Spiegel, no. 7, 1988.

The primary texts I relied on in reconstructing the tasting at Mouton were contemporaneous accounts by Michael Broadbent (“No more doubts,” Decanter, September 1986), Jancis Robinson (“Sweet Taste of Legend at £5,000 a Sip—Tasting 199-year-old claret,” The Sunday Times (of London), June 15, 1986; “Jefferson’s 1787 Mouton,” Decanter, September 1986, and Heinz-Gert Woschek (“Die Rechte Zeit, Der Rechte Ort,” Alles über Wein, no. 3 [1986]); as well as recollections published in JMB’s Vintage Wine, 11, and Robinson’s Tasting Pleasure, 175–78.

cork bobbing in the liquid “Unspoiled Treasure of Lafite 1787,” Decanter, February 1993.

sent fifty bottles of the 1846 Lafite Dewey Markham, 1855: A History of the Bordeaux Classification (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 113.

famously serving curry Winemasters, 202.

the early-1970s price spiral Penning-Rowsell, “The First Growths of Bordeaux.”

he refused to meet with the Germans Author interview with JMB, November 16, 2005.

For the account of the auction of the 1784 Yquem, three reports were indispensable: James Suckling, “Rare 1784 Yquem Brings $56,000,” WS, January 31, 1987; Francis X. Clines, “1784 Wine Fetches $56,000,” NYT, December 5, 1986; and “The Thirst for Vintage Thomas Jefferson Leads to a Record $55,800,” Associated Press, December 5, 1986. My account of the auction of the 1784 Margaux owes a debt to Suckling’s “Publisher Buys 1784 Margaux,” WS, August 31, 1987, and JMB’s Vintage Wine, 11. Lloyd Flatt’s Lafite tasting, both the planning and the execution, was vividly memorialized in two WS articles: Peter Meltzer, “Planning the Lafite Tasting,” December 15, 1988; and Terry Robards, “Lafite Lives Up to Its Name,” December 15, 1988. Some details come from two other articles by Meltzer (“America Collects,” and “Celebrated Collector Lloyd Flatt Rebuilds His Cellar, and Focuses His Buying Strategy,” WS, March 31, 1995) and a report by Frank J. Prial, “Wine,” NYT, October 19, 1988.

the only bottle “of its kind” “Record bid brings Jefferson wine home,” Baltimore Sun, December 6, 1985.

“One now supposes” “That Lafite 1787,” Decanter, June 1986.

“perfect in every sense” Christie’s Finest and Rarest Wines auction catalog, December 5, 1985.

a buyer in the front row “Sale room: 1784 Wine Fetches £39,600,” Times (of London), December 5, 1986.

his precocious connoisseurship “Jefferson: A Shrewd and Demanding Connoisseur,” NYT, September 15, 1976.

Virginia’s wine industry “Virginians Enjoy Some Down-Home Wine Tasting,” WS, July 31, 1991.

122 in 2006 “Virginia: Jefferson Sipped Here… And So Can You,” Washington Post, June 3, 2007.

Jefferson’s epistolary mention TJ to Miromenil, September 6, 1790, Library of Congress collection, translation in J. M. Gabler, Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson (Baltimore: Bacchus Press), 172.

a sock over the bottle “Jefferson wine flies Concorde,” Times (of London), September 3, 1987.

“Slight ullage” JMB, Vintage Wine, 11.

“Yes…, Now go away” Ibid.

“three atrocious vintages” Ibid., 37.

“a penance” Ibid., 58.

Robards had observed “Suspicions Still Surround Rodenstock Lafite,” WS, September 30, 1992.

“An ullaged bottle” JMB, Vintage Wine, 10–11.

told Bill he wasn’t welcome “Wild Bill Koch,” Vanity Fair, June 1994.

$470 million “The Curse on the Koch Brothers,” Fortune, February 17, 1997.

a hedonistic tear “Wild Bill Koch,” Vanity Fair, June 1994.

Koch had been interested in wine “Raising America’s Cup,” WS, August 31, 1996.

deep verticals of four iconic wines Ibid.

33 vintages of Hennessey Cognac “Oil, Water and Wine,” WS, November 15, 2005.