Don and Petie Kladstrup: Wine and War

By JOELLE THOMSON*

To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine, said Claude Terrail, one-time owner of the Parisian restaurant Le Tour d'Argent.

Like many French people during World War II, his form of resistance took subtle and opportunistic forms. Whenever he deemed it possible to hide wines or pass off bad bottles as good ones to the Germans, he took full advantage of the situation.

Today Le Tour d'Argent is still one of the best restaurants in Paris and its wine cellar has recovered from the looting of 80,000 bottles by the Germans upon their occupation of Paris.

Just before the invasion the cellar contained 100,000 bottles of wine, but 20,000 of the best were bricked up in secrecy and in a hurry. And though German soldiers dined at this famous establishment every evening during the war, they never discovered the hidden bottles.

Still, Germany must have had some fantastic wine cellars during that war, if the stories in this meticulously researched, fascinating book are to be believed.

At one point they were nicking off with millions of bottles of wine every week, many of which had false labels, diluted contents or less than a one-star rating by the French, though some great wines were also taken.

It is the stories of Germany's hilariously titled "weinfuhrers" that provide some of the most interesting glimpses into the culture of the day.

These men, often unwittingly and sometimes intentionally, helped to save some of the most precious jewels in France's wine crown.

Most notable was Heinz Bomers, who joined the Nazi Party under sufferance. From the minute war was declared on Germany on September 3, 1939, Bomers is reported to have been quietly confident that Germany was going to lose. He regularly told the French at his posting in Bordeaux that he wished to help them keep their wine industry as intact as possible for after the war.

Great wine prose is thin on the ground, so wine lovers will be enamoured to hear of this book - but it is not just another excuse to write about wine, as authors Don and Petie Kladstrup explain. In fact, it transcends wine stories, delving deep into wartime history.

The authors claim to have resisted the urge to write this book until French wine and its makers' wartime stories got the better of them. Many of these anecdotes and stories are recalled from faded memories, but the authors have worked hard to substantiate details in an impressive and often terrifying account.

Like many champagne makers, Moet's commercial director, Claude Fourmon, shipped much substandard bubbly to the Germans. On being discovered, his actions were declared an act of terrorism and Fourmon was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The authors sometimes, gratingly, divide everybody in this book into goodies and baddies. It may be an irresistible trap with such subject matter, but the beginning of the book seems just a tad over-simplified, perhaps because, in their endeavours to stick tightly to the subject at hand, the authors have not taken the time to set the scene of either the war or the French wine industry in the 1930s and 1940s, other than to talk about bad vintages.

For all that, this book has an enticing sense of pace once the reader is into the second or third chapter. Its well-written narrative and journalistic style tell a story that is, by turns, scary, enlightening and impossible to put down.

* Coronet, $29.99

* Joelle Thomson is the wine writer for the Herald's Viva magazine.