Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (8 page)

The year Aubert was born, 1939, World War II started. Aubert’s papa, Henri, went off to fight. The Germans captured his unit and put them in a prison. For a time, Germans occupied his grandfather’s home, a farm in Moulins.

During that second war, his grandfather’s partner in the Domaine, Jacques Chambon, decided he had had enough of losing money on Romanée-Conti and wanted to sell his half of the Domaine.

Edmond was afraid that like so many other families, they would have to sell off chunks of their vineyards, and for next to nothing. For a time it appeared that the prominent Burgundian family the Drouhins might buy out Jacques Chambon. This pleased Edmond. Maurice Drouhin was the Domaine’s largest distributor. Aubert’s grandfather and Drouhin got along well. They believed in the supremacy of Burgundy and in sparing no cost to take good care of the vines and produce excellent wines.

Drouhin had long dreamed of owning a piece of Romanée-Conti. However, like Aubert’s father, Drouhin was also in a German POW camp. When his wife wrote to inform him there was an opportunity to buy half of the Domaine, Drouhin ultimately told her that with everything made uncertain by the war, they could not risk going into debt for the sake of the purchase.

In 1942 a meeting took place at the Domaine. Most of Aubert’s aunts and uncles attended. Because Henri could not
attend, Aubert’s mother traveled through checkpoints of war-ravaged France to attend and represent his interest. Her views were her husband’s views. After the big meeting at the Domaine, Aubert heard, the Domaine became something called a
société civile
, a corporation, and a man who had become rich in the wine trade, the patriarch of another prominent Burgundian wine family, a Monsieur Henri Leroy, was his grandfather’s new partner.

Aubert was about five years old when he learned one day that World War II was over. A man appeared in his home and Aubert asked his mother if he was going to stay for dinner. The man was frail and sickly-looking; he appeared in need of a meal. Aubert’s mother informed her son that, yes, the man would be staying for dinner, and it was her hope that he would stay for a very long time, because this man was Aubert’s father, Henri. He had been liberated.

“Say hello to your father,” his mother said, nudging little Aubert toward the man. “Give him a hug.”

Aubert did as he was told.

Then came the bugs.
Phylloxera vastatrix
, they were called. They were a mystery because no one knew where they’d come from or how to get rid of them. The bugs were tiny, almost impossible to see with the naked eye. They were everywhere in the vines. Eating the vines. Killing them. They caused pimples on the leaves and chewed the wood. Vignerons had tried all sorts of things to save the vines, to kill the phylloxera, but nothing worked. Some vignerons even flooded vineyards to drown the insects. This seemed to work a bit, but not really.

Vines kept dying.

Eventually the bugs came to Romanée-Conti and the vines began to wither. People told his grandfather he should rip out all of them. People told him he had no choice. Monsieur Leroy
agreed. At first Aubert’s grandfather refused. The vines were more than 350 years old, he said. They were history, he said. If Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet could resist cholera, his vines could endure bugs.

Following much discussion, in 1945, when Aubert was six years old, Edmond, the man Aubert was coming to know as his father, and Monsieur Clin gathered with some hired hands in Romanée-Conti. Coquette was harnessed, and the men and gentle beast set about tearing out the vines of Romanée-Conti.

Freshly removed, the bug-infested vines were piled in a twisted frenzy, the long, stringy roots sticking out every which way, as if the
enfants
were trying to cling to something, to someone as they were dragged into a burn pile on the edge of the vineyard.

Little Aubert heard that while the work was being done, as the
enfants
snapped and cracked in the fire, as the smoke from the burning vinestocks curled to the sky, people came from the village of Vosne, people came from all over Burgundy, and watched and wept. Little Aubert was told that Edmond wept.

Aubert and his grandfather came to end of the dirt road, where it formed a T with another dirt road that squiggled north and south through the vines. The only sign at the crossroads was the cross.

To the north were the Domaine’s vines in the top-growth vineyards of Richebourg, Grands Échézeaux, and Échézeaux, and beyond those more top-growth vineyards, and then beyond those, little Aubert could see, the roof of the magnificent castle structure of Clos de Vougeot, the ancient home and winery for the monks who first cultivated the Côte d’Or, and where, for a time, before Duvault-Blochet, the grapes of Romanée-Conti were
vinified. The Clos was in need of repair, having been damaged by the bombs from the sky. Beyond the Clos was the village of Chambolle-Musigny.

To the south were the vineyards of La Grande Rue, and two more Domaine holdings: La Tâche and Les Gaudichots, then still more vines off in the distance spilled around the town of Nuits-Sts.-Georges, and the restaurant where Edmond and Aubert would sometimes have lunch. It was called La Croix Blanche, which Edmond chose to believe was named after the white stone cross of the Romanée-Conti vineyard. In Nuits there were also the chocolate shops and bakeries Little Aubert liked.

Immediately behind Romanée-Conti was the even smaller parcel of La Romanée, the smallest parcel in Burgundy. Aubert knew those vines were owned by the Liger-Belairs, the family with the priest who, according to Edmond, had such an excellent palate. It was right about where Romanée-Conti left off and La Romanée began that subtle pitch in the
côte
transitioned into a rather severe degree.

From the road where Aubert and his grandfather now stood to the top of the hill made for a challenging hike of about a quarter of a mile, like walking up the face of a large green wave that would never break unto itself. On the top of the hill were dense woods.

Aubert followed his grandfather to the right of the cross, into the Romanée-Conti vines. The vines were small and thin. While all of Burgundy’s vines are considered
enfants
, these were truly babies, newly planted vines. It was hard for the boy to imagine that they would ever grow into the sort of sturdy, adult vines that would produce grapes of any kind, let alone the caliber of grapes he was always hearing so much about. Edmond walked among the vines, stopping to inspect them.

One of the stories Aubert’s grandfather had told him was about the monks who were here first. They had put the dirt in their mouths and tasted the differences in the soil; that was how they determined where one vineyard would end and another would begin—the soils had different textures, different flavors.

Edmond knelt and touched a vinestock as gently as he’d placed his hand on the back of his grandson’s neck. He examined the leaves. He tenderly pushed away the baby canopies of green and studied the shoots, the buds. Madame Clin was right: These
enfants
were coming along nicely.

Edmond watched his grandson wander the vineyard. Little Aubert was not much taller or, for that matter, much older than this new generation of Romanée-Conti vines. Edmond considered that maybe one day Aubert would be the one running the Domaine. Just as these vineyards had been passed down to his late wife and now to him, just as Edmond would pass them on to Aubert’s father, Henri. Perhaps these very vines then would be in the hands of his grandson. Maybe the vines and Aubert would grow and work together to make the world’s greatest wine. Perhaps, even, they would do well enough for the Domaine to one day break even.

Fat clouds slid to wherever they were going. Maybe, Aubert was inclined to wonder, the clouds would make it to Paris’s big-city excitement. Maybe the clouds would float all the way to the sky above the American West, where the Americans rode into adventure on the open plains.

Aubert and his grandfather began their walk back into Vosne. They returned on the same road that cut between the vines of Romanée-St.-Vivant and would end near the Église St.-Martin. The road was called Rue du Temps Perdue, the Street of Lost Time. To Little Aubert that name for a road into vineyards made a great deal of sense.

T
he only clue as to what occupies the address No. 1 Rue Derrière le Four is the very small—maybe six inches high—
R
and
C
atop the tall red iron gates. Behind the gates is a cobblestone courtyard. Wrapped around the courtyard, a flat, one-story, U-shaped building. Entering the gates, the right wing houses the DRC’s bottling operation. Ahead and off to the left a bit is the doorway to the cellar—labyrinthine catacombs that wind beneath and beyond the compound. In the left wing there is the tasting room, sparsely furnished with mission-style chairs and tables, and the business offices. Not far from the red gates is the main entrance.

The door, like a work of art, is set within a wall constructed of flat, jagged stones. It is arched, ancient-looking, vaultlike, and made of thick wood, and understatedly adorned with five horizontal rows of windows. Within each window is a tuliplike design made of iron. It is a front that projects equal parts formidability and tenderness. The sight of it calls to mind images of a monastery, or a kind of precious historical archive, or the meeting place for a secret society, or—because there is just enough of the mystical
about it—maybe even a portal in time. In a way, to millions of DRC cult-followers around the world, it is all these things.

In the early evening of Friday, January 8, 2010, the door creaked open and the Grand Monsieur emerged. Stepping into a snow globe of blowing flurries, he tightened his scarf and turned up the lapel of his well-worn corduroy sport jacket, which was fading most noticeably at the elbows. There were distinct traces of little Aubert in the face of the seventy-one-year-old. Those arched eyebrows, once youthful wisps, were now salt-and-pepper colored and as wildly bushy as two caterpillars.

He raised one of those eyebrows in frustration as he flipped through the jangling key chain he had been handed officially, though without ceremony, decades earlier. Monsieur de Villaine was frustrated by some of the changes that come with age. It simply was not so, he thought, that everything gets better with age. In all things there is a pinnacle in maturation and then a dissipation. Even with his finest Pinot Noirs there comes a point when the wine has been kept too long and it begins to fade. It’s the same with people. Here he was with a clear vision, informed by decades’ worth of wisdom and experience, yet now his eyesight was waning. It was a challenge for him to find the right key.

Voilà!
At last he found the key to lock up.

Along with the corduroy jacket and the scarf, he wore scuffed leather boots and a wool Jeff cap cocked just so. The workaday winter wardrobe of the average Burgundian vigneron. The clothes both represented and belied Monsieur de Villaine’s status. While he looked every bit the vigneron-farmer he was, nothing about his appearance hinted at his wealth. One of the French gossip magazines he made a point of ignoring had recently listed him among the richest people in France.

With his typical straight-backed dignity and grace, Monsieur
de Villaine crossed the courtyard to his station wagon, the lone automobile. Often, his longtime assistant Jean-Charles Cuvelier was the last one to leave for the day. Jean-Charles had recently purchased a beautiful new black Mercedes-Benz sedan, which he parked next to his boss’s modest and usually dirty Renault. Jean-Charles and the rest of Monsieur de Villaine’s employees had left for the day. The Domaine was now closed for the weekend.

The Grand Monsieur had stayed late. He had called to tell his wife, Pamela, he needed to get caught up on paperwork. Which was true. During the winter months, when the vines were dormant, so was much of the wine industry, and these months made for an excellent time to take care of office work. Also true, as Pamela knew, was that the paperwork probably could have waited, or been done by someone else. Her husband had a hard time pulling himself away from the Domaine. She had been confiding in friends and family that she wished her husband would allow himself to retire.

Her husband was stubborn, but not oblivious. The Grand Monsieur was beginning to prepare not only for when he would be gone from the Domaine, but also for when he would gone from this earth. He had already taken the necessary legal steps to turn over his shares in the Domaine to his nieces and nephews. There would be serious tax issues if he were to die without having tended to this business.
Retirement, death
, he thought,
is there any difference?

Yes.

And no
. As with all things related to the Domaine, for Monsieur de Villaine, passing on his shares was much more than a business decision. In order to ensure that his nieces and nephews understood this very fact, in a matter of weeks he would gather
them together at the DRC for a luncheon. He would tell them that these shares represent much more than annual returns; they are pieces of the Domaine and the Domaine is something much more than a market valuation, much bigger than any one person. The shares, he would say, are the fruit born of the sacrifice and labor of many generations that came before them, when there was no money to be made from the wines. The Domaine’s current success, he would say, is the result of the work of the holy monks, the dukes of Burgundy, a prince, their very own fathers and grandfathers.

Still, retirement was a topic he tried to avoid discussing. A few weeks earlier, during a dinner Aubert and Pamela shared with dear friends, Jacques and Rosalind Seysses, Rosalind had looked across the table and asked Monsieur de Villaine when he planned to step aside.

Jacques and Rosalind had started at their own esteemed Burgundian winery, Domaine Dujac, in Morey-St.-Denis, a town not far up the road, just when Monsieur de Villaine had taken over the DRC, in the 1970s. The seventies were pivotal and an exciting decade for French wines, and, for that matter, even more so for American wines.

In 1976, a British wine shop owner, Steven Spurrier, orchestrated an unprecedented tasting competition that pitted some of the finest wines of France against the most acclaimed wines of the United States. In results that made headlines and stunned the wine world, a wine from Northern California received the top scores. The Grand Monsieur’s own role at the center of that controversial affair was something he never discussed publicly.

Rosalind hadn’t asked Monsieur de Villaine the question to be nosy. She wasn’t at all trying to pry. For her and Jacques it was natural conversation. The only reason she had asked Monsieur
de Villaine about his plans was that Jacques and Rosalind themselves had recently begun to transition out of their winery, entrusting their domaine more and more to their two sons. Monsieur de Villaine knew this. He was the godfather to Jacques and Rosalind’s son Jeremy, who thought so much of the Grand Monsieur that he had named his firstborn after him. Jeremy referred to the boy as “Little Aubert.”

Upon hearing Rosalind’s question, Pamela’s ears perked up. She was grateful someone else, someone whom they both considered family, would ask her husband this and get him thinking more in this direction. It was especially fitting that it was Rosalind, as she and Pamela had long shared a unique bond: They were both Americans married to famous vignerons. So far from home, they had found their way in the Burgundy wine world together.

It wasn’t that Pamela didn’t care about the Domaine or wanted to see her husband give up something that he loved so dearly. On the contrary, she loved the Domaine almost as much as her husband did, not just because he loved it, but because the Domaine family had become her family, too. Pamela had done and would do anything she could to support her husband and the DRC.

The great-granddaughter of Charles Fairbanks, who had served as vice president to Teddy Roosevelt and was the namesake of Fairbanks, Alaska, Pamela had gladly given up her idyllic life in Southern California, for her husband and the Domaine. Truth be told, in French society, where it wasn’t exactly unusual for men to have romantic dalliances, Pamela was grateful for such a devoted husband, whose only mistress was a winery.

It was just that Pamela thought it was time—time that her husband focused on his own health rather than the health of the vines. And, yes, as she’d confided to one of her sisters-in-law, now that they were in the twilight of their lives together, Pamela
thought it was time for them to be together more, to enjoy their vacation homes in the south of France and Big Sur, California, before there was no more time. Pamela was not surprised by her husband’s response to Rosalind’s question. Monsieur de Villaine gently waved a hand and said it was not something he wished to discuss. He asked that they please move on to another subject and not return to this one.

Jacques was surprised by his friend’s definitive reaction. After all, they were like family. Jacques suspected part of the reason the Grand Monsieur did not want to discuss the topic was that there would be questions about succession at the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. While Dujac’s succession plans were clearly defined and relatively simple, the DRC was mired in myriad family complexities and long-simmering tensions that no one openly discussed, out of respect for Monsieur de Villaine.

When Henri Leroy had purchased Jacques Chambon’s half of the Domaine, certain agreements had been made. The de Villaine family continued to maintain the exclusive right to distribute the DRC wines in Europe and the United States, but, as part of the deal, the Leroy family took control of distribution of the wines elsewhere around the world.

Another part of the Leroy–de Villaine partnership outlined a change in the management structure. Each family appointed its own director and these two were co-
gérants
overseeing the Domaine’s operations. At an annual shareholders meeting held every December over lunch at the Domaine, the families would gather for a briefing by the codirectors. When necessary on decisions related to major expenditures and management appointments, shareholder votes would be taken. Mostly, the gatherings were nothing but joyous and ran smoothly. However, there were rare occasions when Monsieur de Villaine found himself having
to defend his decisions that impacted the family’s dividends. He was then about to tear up and replant parcels of vines in La Tâche and Romanée-St.-Vivant. Such a move would impact the revenues, as there would be fewer wines to sell for several years. But Monsieur de Villaine was not about to compromise the long-term reputation of DRC wines for short-term gains.

Although there were these annual votes and other codified bylaws governing the corporation—the
société civile
—the success of the Domaine was ultimately rooted in the family shareholders’ ability to defer to one of the two directors as the de facto CEO. For more than three decades that person had been Monsieur de Villaine. In recent months the de Villaines had agreed, or so it seemed, that the Grand Monsieur’s much younger relation, Bertrand de Villaine, who had been apprenticing at the DRC, would be Aubert’s successor. The matter, however, was not a fait accompli.

Some shareholders wondered if another de Villaine nephew, Pierre de Benoist, was a more natural fit. Further complicating the algebra of it all was Monsieur de Villaine’s current and longtime codirector from the Leroy side, Henri-Frédéric Roch: How would he and whomever was chosen coexist? Who would defer to whom? Would Monsieur Roch even stay on? Would there be a complete changing of the guard? (Would Jean-Charles stick around?) If Henri Roch did leave his position, there was a widely circulated theory—or was it a wish?—among the shareholders that his spot would go to Henri Leroy’s granddaughter, Perrine. If that happened it might very well drag the Domaine back into the family feud that had threatened to destroy it.

Jacques was privy to the Domaine’s circumstances well enough to know all of this—well, almost all of it. Frankly, many in the Côte d’Or had some idea of the extent of the Domaine’s
familial tensions. For years, those tensions weren’t much of an issue. Not as long as Monsieur de Villaine was in charge. But when he stepped aside…

Jacques knew his friend well enough to know that he was a shrewd man who had chessed out all of the possibilities and that each outcome was fraught with so much. Yet at that dinner conversation Jacques sensed just how much it all weighed on his friend.

The Grand Monsieur got into his grimy Renault station wagon. The car’s interior was also a bit of a mess. The dashboard, along with everything else, was covered in a layer of fine dirt. Waiting for the engine to warm, he rubbed his hands—slender and sun-spotted. He clicked the remote control attached to the driver’s-side visor. At the end of the small courtyard the tall red wrought-iron fences next to the visitors’ entrance parted.

As the gates closed behind him, Monsieur de Villaine glimpsed in his rearview mirror to be sure they locked together. Perfunctory routine more than anything else. The Domaine was protected by more than gates. The cellar, with all of its thousands upon thousands of bottles of wine, worth millions of dollars, was fortified with a considerable security system. Monsieur de Villaine never gave a second thought to the idea that his vineyards were unprotected.