Don und Petie Kladstrup: War and Wine

The French, the Nazis and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure

What should one do when France’s most valuable wines are in danger of falling into the hands of the German occupiers? The French winegrowers’ response was as courageous as it was ingenious: they hid their finest bottles, forged labels, made entire consignments of wine vanish – and turned inferior wine into supposed rarities.

In *Wine and War*, Don and Petie Kladstrup recount a largely unknown chapter in French history. During the German occupation, wine became a contested commodity – and the winegrowers became unexpected allies of the Resistance. Railway workers made entire trains carrying wine deliveries vanish. Parisian sommeliers had a carpet-cleaning firm supply them with dust so they could pass off young wine as decades-old treasures. At the legendary restaurant La Tour d’Argent, 20,000 bottles were bricked up, whilst a further 80,000 bottles were confiscated by the Germans. Even Mouton-Rothschild was summarily relabelled with fake labels for the Nazi leadership.

Yet behind these often almost unbelievable stories lies more than just French ingenuity. The authors show how closely wine and the Resistance were linked, and what role winegrowers and the wine trade played in the fight against the occupiers. They also tell the stories of courageous men such as Pierre Taittinger, who helped to save Paris from destruction, and explore the question of why Bordeaux, despite its millions of valuable bottles of wine, was not blown up.