The billionaire's vinegar
by Benjamin Wallace · first published 2008
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Entertaining account of the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold, a supposed Benjamin Franklin bottle, plus a tour through rare and old wines; a fun, eye-opening read about wine collecting and its people.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie's of London, a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux--one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson--went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose. Why wouldn't Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled
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Check out the book The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace if you're interested in learning the background on why blockchain technology won't solve these kind of problems. Hardy Rodenstock fooled the foremost wine expert in the world.
on “How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain” ↗A fun read is Benjamin Wallace's The Billionaire's Vinegar. Ostensibly it's about the then-most expensive bottle of wine sold, a bottle supposedly owned by Benjamin Franklin, but it's a good tour through expensive wines and old wines. It's from 2008 so I imagine…
on “The oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world” ↗