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“The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine” is a 2008 book by Benjamin Wallace that wryly chronicles a 1980s-90s case of apparent fine wine flimflam. The surprise, to me anyway, was that one of the most devoted and demonstrative antique wine collectors described in the book resided in a pair of townhouses on Ursulines Street in the French Quarter. According to the book, one house was for him, one was for his 30,000-bottle collection.
The plot pours forth like so: When an ancient house was torn down in Paris in 1985, workers discovered a trove of 225-year-old wine that was almost certainly once owned by none other than revolutionary bon vivant Thomas Jefferson.
Wallace points out, nobody but a mysterious German music producer with an amazing talent for discovering heretofore unknown stashes of antique wine knew exactly where the demolished mansion once stood, or who once lived there, or why the wine was walled up in the first place. But who could doubt the authenticity of the treasure; the third president’s initials were etched right on the dusty bottles to prove it.
In Wallace’s telling, Jefferson scholars scratched their heads in incredulity as billionaires, including Malcolm Forbes and William Koch, snapped up bottles for upward of $100,000 from the high-living German’s eager auctioneers.
As we all know, wine – even precious presidential wine — can impair one’s judgment.
Wallace’s book ends as Koch devotes himself to ferreting out wine frauds. With the help of scientists who specialize in nuclear dating techniques, a retired FBI sleuth and high-priced international lawyers Koch officially calls the Jefferson wine’s presumed provenance into question. But not before the international community of trusting oenologists woke up with an embarrassing credibility hangover.
If a collision of larceny, gullibility, incredible wealth and pretentiousness appeals to you, then by all means uncork “The Billionaire’s Vinegar” and offer a toast to Mr. Wallace.
Read Bryan Miller’s New York Times review of the book.
But back to Ursulines Street and the flamboyant former French Quarterite who, in Wallace’s telling, played a conspicuous role in the American wine boom of the 1980s-90s.
As Wallace reported, Lloyd Flatt was a Tennessean who amassed a fortune in the aerospace and weapons industry. Flatt was famous for staging stunningly extensive and unimaginably expensive mass wine tastings. The shrewd businessman may not have been among the millionaires stung by the sale of the bogus Jefferson Bordeaux. But according to a 1988 story by Frank J. Prial in the New York Times, the above-mentioned German presented one of his Jefferson bottles at one of Flatt’s grandest tastings, with overly astringent results. As Prial wrote of the moment: “the wine in the Jefferson bottle was vinegar.”
In a 2008 obituary in Wine Spectator magazine titled “Wine Collector Lloyd Flatt Dies at 71,” friend and fellow oenologist Peter D. Meltzer had this to say about the wine meister of Ursulines:
“Throughout the 1980s, Flatt hosted numerous wine extravaganzas, replete with marching bands and black-tie dinner dances. His celebrated megatastings included a 115-vintage examination of Château Lafite dating back to the 1784 vintage … They were all conducted gratis for the edification of his wine buddies.”
In a 2010 Wine Spectator story titled “Lloyd Flatt’s Cellar to be Sold at Sotheby’s,” Meltzer, wrote this about the gregarious and generous wine collector:
“Flatt ultimately amassed a 15,000-bottle (some say 30,000-bottle) collection which occupied an entire temperature- and humidity-controlled house in New Orleans’ French quarter. The first time I was given a chance to select a wine from his cellar for dinner, I chose a Château Cheval-Blanc 1949. ‘You can do better than that,’ he said, grabbing a Château Mouton-Rothschild 1929 and a decanter. ‘This is a working cellar, not a showcase; I collect in order to drink my finds and to share them.'”
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune’s own Todd A. Price wrote a blog entry in 2010 that fleshed out the image of the Vieux Carre vino king a bit more:
“Dressed in a tailored Bijan suit, Lloyd Flatt clutched a magnum of 1924 Ausone as he led the Storyville Stompers through the French Quarter,” Price wrote. “It was 1987 and Flatt, along with a bevy of wealthy wine collectors, was taking a lunch break from a long morning of tasting.”
In the story, Price quoted the New York Times wine writer (mentioned above): “‘With his eye patch, cowboy boots, loud drawl and John Wayne swagger, he towered over all us pasty-faced wine geeks, physically and psychologically,’ said Frank J. Prial, who covered many of Flatt’s tastings for The New York Times. ‘The fact that he had a separate house just for his wine was really over the top.'”
“The tastings were formal,” Price wrote. “A dozen or so men gathered around a table. Each received a leather-bound notebook to record his thoughts. A group of volunteers, usually local wine professionals, filled the crystal glasses custom made by Tiffany and Co. Someone would talk briefly about world events the year each wine was made. And then everyone would drink and offer an opinion.”