The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

The Billionaire’s Vinegar is an excellent narrative non-fiction account of an extraordinary case of wine fraud: the $156,000 sale of what was claimed to be a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite owned by Thomas Jefferson, only for it to turn out to be a forgery. Benjamin Wallace tells a gripping detective story as the fraud is uncovered, but also takes interesting detours into broader issues such as the techniques for faking wine, the science behind detecting fraudulent wine, and the subjectivity of wine tasting (which leads to a general deference to “experts," a situation ripe for abuse by bad actors).