Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (23 page)

By the time the British fleet left Portsmouth, England, on September 8, they were at least three weeks behind the schedule of the plans and timing originally set for in the schemes for the Secret Expedition. When the English fleet attacked the Île-d’Aix and in all the time before and the short time after they were in the bay, the English saw no sign of the promised native insurgence. Ligonier decided to abort. Because all involved in London were embarrassed by their “mouse” that barely squeaked, they let the matter fade as quickly and quietly as possible.

Louis XV accepted that Herrenschwand’s intelligence implicating the Prince de Conti in the Secret Expedition was accurate. But he could not act on it. If it were made public that the wildly popular prince had lost faith in his cousin-king and orchestrated such an attack, the king feared it might expose the frailty of his fraying monarchy. The people and
parlement
might be encouraged to act so boldly.

Of course, the king, being the king, could have arranged for his cousin to vanish. It would seem even still Louis’s affections and admiration for the prince endured. There is the notion of him trailing Pompadour through Versailles making the prince’s case:… Herrenschwand’s evidence against Louis-François is circumstantial.… The spy himself had said nothing could be proven against the prince.

For reasons political, but also profoundly personal, the exasperated king, who talked openly and often of his desire to walk away
from the crown, was relieved to merely be no longer troubled by the prince and whatever it was that he had or had not done.

After the debacle of the “Secret Invasion,” Pompadour at last had another wish come true: The Prince de Conti was not seen at court and otherwise kept the lowest of profiles. He spent time at the Palais du Temple and his private residences: the Hôtel de Conti in Paris and his retreat at L’Île-Adam, well south of the city. L’Île-Adam happened to be a Protestant stronghold, not that that necessarily reveals anything about Conti’s religious leaning. As with all things related to the prince, it was never clear what he believed, or if he believed in any god at all. One of the few times Louis-François did surface in the public was to purchase La Romanée, but even then he was a figure in the shadows.

In the sixteenth century, the Cluny monks of the Order of St.-Vivant and the Benedictines at Cîteaux learned that when the ancestors of the dukes and nobles of Burgundy gave those gifts of land, there were strings attached. Or so the aristocracy was now informing them by way of steep taxes. The monks of St.-Vivant were left with no choice but to auction some of their holdings, including their vineyard, Creux des Clos, a small parcel of vines located just west of Vosne, at the base of the hillside.

Over the next century, Creux des Clos was sold several times over, purchased in 1631 by Philippe de Croonembourg, a military captain and nobleman from Flanders. Monsieur Croonembourg was the one who, sometime before 1651, renamed the vineyard La Romanée. The provenance of the name would forever remain a mystery. One possible explanation is also the simplest: Philippe was inspired by the ancient French term
Romanie
, which was
often invoked throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to describe a very fine claret.

Regardless of his exact reasoning, if Philippe had rebranded the vineyard because his instinct was that the name Creux des Clos lacked a certain marketable
je ne sais quoi
and believed that La Romanée conveyed an alluring romanticism that would entice customers, he chose well.

Until the last half of the 1600s, wines from the Côte de Beaune were regarded as superior to those from the Côte de Nuits. Croonembourg’s wine changed that. By 1733, La Romanée was valued at five times that of the next most prized wine from anywhere in the Côte. Between 1750 and 1760, a single
Romanée queue
(an old French wine term meaning a quantity of 456 liters) was worth between 1,200 and 1,400
livres
depending on the quality of the vintage. The Croonembourgs shrewdly sold La Romanée only in
feuillettes
(a quarter
queue
), making it more rare and more expensive. By way of comparison, the wines of Clos de Vougeout were going for 200
livres
per
queue
.

Despite the fact that La Romanée was far and away the priciest wine in France, when André Croonembourg, the fourth generation of his family to own the vineyard, died in 1745, his wife and children were left in debt and forced to auction off the prized vineyard.

The prince, whose ancestral roots were in Burgundy, with eyes and ears all over, would have been among the first to know that the region’s most prestigious vineyard was for sale. Not only did he want this vineyard, judging from the covert steps he took to acquire the parcel, he ached for it. The prince pursued La Romanée as if it were the target of a
Secret du Roi
mission.

Because of his noble ancestry in Burgundy, the Prince de Conti was a lord of Nuit and d’Argilly. His family had received
that land from Louis XIII in 1631 and owned vast domains in Côte de Nuits. Logically, if the prince wanted to buy this vineyard in the heart of Burgundy, he could have announced himself as the buyer and almost certainly his name and wealth would have chased off any other interested buyers. Yet the Prince de Conti himself did not bid on La Romanée. He dispatched a proxy to pose as the interested buyer. While buying through a straw man wasn’t especially unusual for the times, the fact that the prince chose this route is curious, made all the more intriguing by the proxy he chose.

For his collaborator in this endeavor, the prince enlisted Jean-François Joly de Fleury, who was the intendant of Burgundy, akin to the governor. Joly de Fleury’s father had been one of Conti’s most outspoken allies on Protestant matters at
parlement
(and perhaps, even, a trusted aide in arranging the Secret Expedition). The Joly de Fleury family were no fans of Pompadour.

In addition to the covert methodology the prince employed to make the bid, the effort to acquire the vineyard was made even more interesting by what he offered to pay for it. The going rate for an
ouvrée
(about 4.2 acres) of vines was then about 200
livres
, but Conti authorized Joly de Fleury spend 92,400
livres
, or 2,310
livres
per
ouvrée
—or more than eleven times the going rate!

No matter how much the prince loved good wine, and he did; no matter how badly he wanted this vineyard, clearly he did; no matter how wealthy he was, that Conti paid such an astronomical price is vexing. Especially considering what he did with it after he purchased it.

The Croonembourg family had managed to build La Romanée into a brand that had become the most expensive and highly coveted wine in Burgundy, which made it one of the most expensive wines, if not the most expensive, in France. With the network and
financial largesse of the prince, Conti could have grown a fortune from his fortune. At the very least, he could have earned back what he’d spent on the parcel.

The prince continued to pour money into La Romanée. He spared no expense on the viticulture. He would visit Vosne and meet with his vineyard manager, stressing quality over quantity; the prince instructed him to do whatever was necessary to grow the best grapes for the finest wine. Yet none of his investment in the vineyard was for the sake of commerce. The prince removed La Romanée from the market completely and cellared it all as his own private reserve.

Why the secrecy? Why pay such a price?

One plausible explanation for his secret expedition into Vosne might be Pompadour. By 1760, Madame de Pompadour was thirty-nine years old. She was, without question, one of the most influential figures at court. The duchess had ensured her trusted confidants were elevated, including Berryer. The former head of the French police was made a member of the king’s cabinet, where he continued to oversee the police and spy networks, along with greatly expanded powers.

It would have been extraordinarily unlike Pompadour to simply let her nemesis, the prince, waltz off unmonitored. After all, in her eyes, the prince had orchestrated an attempted assassination on the king and almost single-handedly triggered an English invasion of France that would have overthrown Louis—not to mention jeopardize her own well-being. With the prince still out there, she would have wanted to know his activities.

Even in the unlikely event the duchess did not have Berryer keep the prince under surveillance, it would have been unlike the spymaster Conti to assume he was not under Pompadour’s many watchful eyes. If the Madame were to have learned that Conti
wanted this prized vineyard, she may very well have bought it out from under him, just for spite. Thus the prince would have enlisted a front man, and someone whom he knew he could trust. Considering that Joly de Fleury had been Conti’s ally in Paris, his son Jean-François made for a fine choice. The family Joly de Fleury would have relished any opportunity to thwart Pompadour. Similarly, it would make sense to make an offer that would expeditiously seal the deal.

But why pull La Romanée off the market? Why not flaunt it after you’ve got it? Maybe even send a case to Versailles addressed to the madame with a note written in pinpricks that says something like: Share it with the ladies. Sincerely, the Prince de Conti.

Why pull it from the market when all of the nobles, the bishop of Avignon included, wanted it and were willing to pay for it? Perhaps precisely because all of the nobles, the Bishop of Avignon included, wanted it and were willing to pay for it.

While the prince kept a low profile, that did not mean he ceased being the prince and stoking the flames of insurrection already burning with his countrymen. The guests that he and his mistress the Countess Boufflers hosted were often a who’s who of the French Enlightenment. In fact, some of them were the architects of the Enlightenment. Rousseau, Voltaire, and Mozart were friends and guests of the prince.

In 1754, when Rousseau had published his essay, “What Is the Origin of Inequality Among Men? And Is It Authorized by Natural Law?” he had put himself at odds with the French establishment. In his subsequent works he continued to dare to promote civil rights and freedom of religion, thought, and speech. Conti and his friend the Duc de Luxembourg were patrons of Rousseau because they shared his views, but also because the more enlightened the
citoyens
became, the more it eroded the
power of the monarchy of Louis XV and Pompadour. The archbishop of Paris condemned Rousseau and burned his works, which ultimately earned a warrant for his arrest and forced him to flee Paris. For a time Rousseau took shelter with the prince.

When Pompadour first arrived at Versailles, she celebrated and supported Voltaire’s work. However, as his plays and essays and opinions became more critical of the Catholic Church and the monarchy, their friendship ended. Voltaire celebrated Britain’s progressive embrace of freedom of speech and religion, and Shakespeare. Most notably, he channeled his observations into a series of essays called
Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais
(Philosophical Letters on the English). Exiled and often on the run from French authorities, Voltaire, too, found safe harbor with the prince.

And then there was Mozart. From the time Wolfgang Amadeus was a boy, the Contis had recognized his talents and praised and supported him. As a child, Mozart would visit the prince, play for private gatherings at the Contis’ home, and listen to the politically fueled conversation. Such visits almost certainly shaped Mozart’s work. Within a matter of years, with France on the brink of revolution, Mozart would compose the comedic opera of Beaumarchais’s
The Marriage of Figaro
.

On the surface, the opera was satirical, but it masked subversive political commentary. In the first act, the servant Figaro dares to challenge his master. Figaro is an intelligent man of integrity, while the aristocrats are cruel, self-indulgent fools. Louis XV’s successor, King Louis XVI, attempted to have the play banned. Despite the king’s efforts, the show would go on in Paris, causing a riot in the audience in which three people were trampled to death. Napoleon would call it “the French Revolution on the stage.”

Voltaire, Rousseau, Mozart, they would gather around the prince, the man at the center of everything and nothing—the man
who had just bought La Romanée and put it beyond the reach of the monarchy. The prince’s wine, much like his independence, could not be bought by the crown or the aristocracy, but the Prince de Conti was happy to give as much of the wine to these men as they liked. Louis-François was pouring a bit of his own subversive La Romanée revolution into their glasses.

The Prince de Conti died at the age of fifty-eight from what was probably cancer. The year was 1776, the year America secured its independence, France’s revolution to begin thirteen years later. From the Prince de Conti’s son, the New Regime would confiscate property, including La Romanée and its winery in Vosne, and put them up for national auction.

The advertisement for the 1794 auction would read: