The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Book Review: Fascinating at first, but fell off at end
Summary: 4 Stars
I read the first chapter for this online after seeing an ad for it in the NY Times. I was hooked and had to buy the book. It was a fascinating story, and taught me a lot about wine and its history. The writer succeeded in giving this nonfiction work and fictional feel and made it an easy read. My only complaint is that I did not feel the story had an ultimate resolution, and I was left wondering what happened next. That's the problem with nonfiction, you can't just make up the missing details. Book Review: helped me think about lots of unrelated things
Summary: 4 Stars
this book caught my eye in the new books section of borders recently. i'm not a rare and collectible wine aficianado. i really don't know that much about wine. i know that i like most reds (with pinot noir being my current favorite, along with argentine malbec), i like chardonnay, and i don't like sauvignon blanc, white zin, or other girly whites. i can tell the difference between two-buck-chuck and a decent $10 - $20 bottle. but i can't tell the difference between a $30 bottle and a $50 bottle. once, a friend had been given a $300 bottle of wine as a gift, and he shared it with me. other than that, i've not tasted much of the really pricey stuff.
but this book was about much more than bottles of wine that sell for $20,000 - $100,000 (or more). it's about human behavior. and it's about the birth, rise, corruption, and demise, of a small and unique passion (in this case, collecting -- and occasionally tasting -- rare old wines). the bottle in the subtitle is (or was) the most expensive bottle ever sold, at more than $150,000. part of its allure was its connection to thomas jefferson. for twenty years, this bottle, and a couple dozen others like it, were surrounded with suspicion as to their authenticity. and, after a couple decades, they've been outed as fakes. this was one factor (of many) that rotted the collectible wine world from the inside out (the fake-creator turned out to be one of the rare wine world's leading sellers).
this rise and fall (starting in the early 60s and lasting, roughly, into the last decade) reminded me of the natural cycle of human organizations.
it reminded of how a surprising conflict over something we were all passionate about became the cancer that destroyed a wonderful group of friends i was a part of.
it made me think about the differences between american culture and others (when american wine collectors got on board with the collectible wine craze, it spiraled out of control and collapsed in on itself).
it made me think about affinity networks and their role in our lives (and their role in my life, and how sustaining they are to me).
it made me think about the love of money.
it made me think about the differences between appreciating a good thing, and needing to possess that thing.
it made me think about the current state of my profession (youth ministry), and of the emerging church (and emergent village, in particular), and of both churches i am part of (the big seeker church and the grass-roots home church), and the internet, and cigars, and a bunch of other stuff.
so, yeah, i enjoyed reading this really well-researched and well-written book - not because i now know more about wine than i did a few weeks ago, but because it provided a hundred rabbit trails of thought.
Book Review: Well written and researched, published too soon...
Summary: 3 Stars
As another reviewer noted, I thought that this book suffered from being published before the story was actually resolved. The first couple hundred pages are true page turners. The author has a nice writing style, and has obviously done his research on the subject of wine and the players in the story. But about two thirds of the way through the book, it starts to unravel. What had been solid focus on the story started to waver, and when the end arrives, it's unsatisfying and abrupt. It felt as if the story wasn't finished, but the author couldn't wait for the resolution. As a result, for all the breathless lead up, the story ends on an anticlimatic note.
So this is a really good book, except that it feels like an unfinished story, probably with several more chapters to go before it's played out. This is the problem with writing about true current events. The facts are still unfolding; it's hard to know where a tale "ends." Sometimes, that's not even clear with events that are clearly put into the historical bucket.
Book Review: Great start, but unsatisfying resolution
Summary: 3 Stars
The first 60% or so of this book was excellent, a real page-turner as others have said. The author does a great job of setting the stage and introducing the characters. The intricacies of ultra-premium wines was explained well, and the characters well drawn and interesting.
My issue came at the mid-point where the story loses focus on its main characters and loses its way for several chapters. Books on reality of course can't always have tidy end-games, but in this case, the tautness of the 3rd quarter didn't live up to the promise of the first three. In the end, very little was revealed or resolved about the motives, methods, and lessons learned about the events of the book. I've read that the movie rights have already been sold; expect a significant re-write of the 3rd act for the film, reality be damned.
Maybe if the author had waited longer or trimmed some of the mid-book tangents, it could have been a 4-star or 5-star taut thriller.
Book Review: A great yarn
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in two sittings. Just a terrific, ripping yarn, full of amazing, vivid characters and beautiful prose. Not only do you get to learn about this rarified world of expensive wine -- a world full of rich people behaving badly -- but you also learn about the hedonism of Thomas Jefferson, and the lameness of Brit-vs.-Yank snobbery, and the psychology of a con job, and (surprisingly, wonderfully) the science of proton beams and carbon dating. Also, despite the fact that the book goes down soooooo easy, it's deceptively daring... you'll have to read it to see why. Up there with "The Devil in the White City" and "The Professor and the Madman" and "Into the Wild" in terms of sheer storytelling power.