In the 2001 bestseller , authors Don and Petie Kladstrup explore a little-known front of World War II: the fight to protect France's vineyards and cellars from German plunder. The Systematic Plunder of French Wine
For the French, protecting their wine was about defending the very "spirit of France". Winemakers employed various daring and creative tactics to thwart the occupiers:
: Winemakers sometimes mislabeled their worst wines as "Grand Cru" to fool German buyers, while others joined the active Resistance to attack trains transporting wine back to Germany. Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Ba...
: Beyond protecting bottles, some vignerons used their vast cellar networks to hide Jewish refugees and smuggle members of the Resistance across the Demarcation Line inside wine barrels. The Moral Complexity: Collaboration
: The collaborationist government sometimes acted to keep France's vineyards in French hands, even preventing the Nazis from seizing Jewish-owned estates like Châteaux Mouton-Rothschild and Lafite-Rothschild to preserve the nation's economic interests. Key Perspectives and Regions Covered In the 2001 bestseller , authors Don and
: Many producers built fake walls to conceal their most precious bottles or buried them underground. The owners of Paris's famed La Tour d'Argent restaurant, for instance, rushed to build a wall to hide 20,000 bottles before the Germans arrived.
: Nazi officials like Hermann Göring were particularly active in acquiring prestigious collections. After the war, French soldiers famously reclaimed a massive cache of stolen wine from Hitler’s "Eagle's Nest" mountain retreat. Ingenious Acts of Resistance : Beyond protecting bottles, some vignerons used their
: The Reich dispatched official German wine merchants, known as weinführers , to every major wine region (such as Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne) to coordinate the massive collection and resale of fine vintages at a profit.