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

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis, and the German army almost immediately began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, wine makers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their heroism has remained largely [...]
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In 1940, France fell to the Nazis, and the German army almost immediately began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, wine makers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their heroism has remained largely unknown?until now. Wine and War tells the alternately thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious and often daring measures to save their finest and most precious crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them. By rooting the narrative in the stories of five prominent wine making families from France's key wine?producing regions of Burgundy, Alsace, the Loire Valley, Bordeaux, and Champagne, journalistsDon and Petie Kladstrup vividly illustrate how men and women risked their lives for a cause that meant saving the heart and soul of France as much as protecting its economy. It was a miraculous collaboration involving everyone from the owners of Paris's famed Tour d'Argent restaurant, who rished to build a wall concealing their finest twenty thousand bottles, and the vignerons whor placed cobwebs strategically to make less-deirable bottles look vintage, to the winegrowers who sabotaged Nazi wine?transporting trains, and French soldiers who triumphantly seized Hitler's enormous cache of stolen wines at the conclusion of the war. They even received help from an unexpected quarter, the German weinfuehrers, the very men the Nazis sent to requisition wine. Based on three years of research and interviews with the survivors who engaged in this epic enterprise, Wine and War illuminates a compelling, little?known chapter of history, and stands as a tribute to extraordinary individuals who waged a brilliant battle that, in a very real way, saved the very spirit of France.

About the Authors:
The winner of three Emmys and the Alfred I. duPont?Columbia University, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, and the Overseas Press Club of America Awards for his journalism, Don Kladstrup is one of America's most distinguished network television news correspondents. His wife, Petie Kladstrup, is a freelance writer who has written widely about France and French life. Contributors to Wine Spectator, the Kladstrups divide their time between Paris and Normandy.