Wine and War - Softcover

& Petie Kladstrup, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340766786 ISBN 13: 9780340766781

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks, 2002

Synopsis

In the vineyards, wine caves, and cellars of France as war and occupation came to the country winemakers acted heroically not only to save the best wines but to defend their way of life.

These are the true stories of vignerons who sheltered Jewish refugees in their cellars and of winemakers who risked their lives to aid the resistance. They made chemicals in secret laboratories to fuel the resistance and fled from the Gestapo when arrests became imminent.

There were treacheries too, as some of the nation's winemakers supported the Vichy regime or the Germans themselves and collaborated.

Donald Kladstrup is a retired American network correspondent. He and his wife Petie have accumulated these fascinating stories, told with the pace and action that will fascinate fiction and non-fiction readers alike.

About this title

Review:

According to Don and Petie Kladstrup in Wine & War: the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure, it was a well-known fact that Adolf Hitler did not like wine. Still, their leader's teetotalism notwithstanding, the Germans showed no distaste for French wine when they invaded France in 1940. Indeed, one of the first acts of the occupying army was to seize great stores of wine, sending tens of thousands of barrels to the Third Reich and ordering the conversion of thousands of hectares of vineyards into war production. Some French vintners, the Kladstrups write in this enjoyable study, went along with orders. Many others, however, including the heads of distinguished houses like Moe¨t et Chandon, engaged in daring and dangerous acts of resistance wherever they could. Some lied about their yields; others built false walls to hide precious vintages; and still others concocted elaborate ruses, such as sprinkling carpet dust into inferior grades of new wine to give it a musty, distinguished flavour. Not every German was fooled, and some partisans of the grape died for their troubles. But some Germans, at considerable risk to themselves, also looked the other way. The Kladstrups fill their pages with memories of the wine war from both sides of the struggle, stories sometimes sombre, sometimes amusing, that commemorate those "whose love of the grape and devotion to a way of life helped them survive and triumph over one of the darkest and most difficult chapters in French history". --Gregory McNamee

Review:

A sprightly and amusing book, full of spicy anecdotes (Evening Standard)

Entertaining and informative (Sunday Telegraph)

A vibrant panorama of the different wine-producing regions and how they responded to the challenge (Sunday Express)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0340766786
• ISBN 13: 9780340766781
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336