Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure - Hardcover

Kladstrup, Donald; Kladstrup, Petie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767904478 ISBN 13: 9780767904476

Publisher: Broadway Books, 2001

Synopsis

Describes how members of five prominent wine-making families from Burgundy, Alsace, the Loire Valley, Bordeaux, and Champagne risked their lives to protect their most precious wines from Nazi plunder during World War II. 25,000 first printing.

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)

We see from Don and Petie Kladstrup's lively book that the history of the wine trade is, in many ways the history of France. (Literary Review)

Wine & War does not pretend to be a scholarly history of wine or the war, concentrating instead on anecdote. Some of it makes for harrowing reading as many in the trade fought back, there is plenty of cloak-and-dagger stuff too. ... a fascinating footnote. (Elizabeth Buchan, The Times)

For connoisseurs, both of fine wine and of tales of the French Resistance, this book will be a vintage treat. (John Ure, Times Literary Supplement)

An enthralling account of the bricking-up of cellars, adulterating wines ordered by the Nazis, using faulty corks and the incredible discovery by Allied troops of millions of bottles of wine stashed in Hitler's cellar...Highly recommended. (Scotsman Magazine)

Full of thought-provoking and well-told stories (Harpers & Queen)

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

Entertaining and informative (Sunday Telegraph)

As the memories unfold, so does a picture of the war seldom found in history books. Personal victories, tiny triumphs and morale-boosting pranks, which ultimately fermented into a palpable resistance movement and saved an industry...Inspirational reading. (THEME)

... this offers an intriguing look at wine ... As the book reached its fin, this reader only hoped for a sequel or two; all right three. (Decanter)

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0767904478
• ISBN 13: 9780767904476
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 279