Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (9 page)

The Renault rumbled over the cobblestones in the street, which was only slightly wider than the horse-drawn carriages they had been built so long ago to accommodate.
Rues
so tight they seemed like corridors. One of the earliest records of the Vosne-Romanée dates back to AD 650, known then as Voana, which historians say likely means “forest,” after the forest above
the slope. Over the centuries, the town was known as Vadona, Vanona, Veona, Voone, and Vone, and finally, the Old French, with the silent
s
, Vosne.

In 1866, in order to market Burgundy as a tourist destination and promote its wines, political and business leaders decided to add the name of each village’s best vineyard to that name of the village itself. Chambolle became Chambolle-Musigny; Gevrey, Gevrey-Chambertin; Morey, Morey-St.-Denis; Puligny, Puligny-Montrachet; and so on. The tiny heart of all of Burgundy became Vosne-Romanée.

While the name morphed, the village itself changed little. Depending on how you count the
rues
that weave through the heart of the village, there may be a total of twenty streets of wildly varying lengths, ultimately connected to a town center that consists of the Église St.-Martin, a post office, and a defunct well, which when weather permits is adorned with flowers. Electricity clicked on in Vosne in 1900. Central gas came in 1934. Vosne didn’t get running water until 1938. Today the town is home to about 450 people. It’s not uncommon for the utilities to go out. Wireless Internet access can be hit-or-miss, mostly miss. The streets appear just as they have since the late nineteenth century, when portions of the town were rebuilt after the Franco-Prussian War; the area required rebuilding again after World War I and World War II.

Each time the repairs mostly strengthened the region, though some nuances would never again be the same. During World War II, the magnificent steel-and-glass roof that Monsieur Eiffel put on the Demeure de Loisy Bed & Breakfast in Nuits-St.-Georges was destroyed by bombing. Though it was reassembled, it was done, Madame de Loisy would sadly explain to guests, with less elegance.

As Monsieur de Villaine made his way home, he navigated the narrow streets densely lined with small houses and great domaines, stone façades chipped and cracked, and topped with shingles—some slate, some shakes. Shutters were closed for the evening. Fireplaces puffed chimney smoke into a brilliantly starry sky. The bells of the Église St.-Martin marked the hour with six gongs.

On the walls of many of the ancient structures he drove by were modern granite plaques, their etched letters painted in with red. When Aubert exited Rue Derrière le Four and turned right there was a marker on the wall to his left. The wall encircled the largest domain in the village. The domaine was behind tall, iron blue gates. The sign read:

There had a been a time when the Liger-Belairs owned many of the best vineyards around Vosne, but the family’s holdings had
dramatically dwindled. A number of Burgundians, especially the residents in the village, had a nickname for the current master of the Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair. Behind his back they called Louis-Michel Liger-Belair “the General.”

The General had a reputation for being a haughty classist, as if time-warped from prerevolutionary France. Locals talked about what, according to photos in wine magazines, had become his trademark ensemble of bright red pants, gold-buckled loafers, blue-and-white pinstriped shirt (with the sleeves rolled up two or three turns), and the gold ring with his family’s coat of arms.

About a decade earlier, when he was in his late twenties, Louis-Michel had arrived in Vosne, moved into the domaine, which his family rarely used, and taken over direct management of his family’s vineyards. During previous decades, his family had leased out the vineyards and the vines and the wines they produced had fallen in stature. The General had reclaimed the vineyards and restored his family name and their wines to the celebrated status they once commanded. He’d been aggressive about promoting his domaine and himself.

At thirty-eight years old, Louis-Michel was already a ranking member of the region’s most prestigious wine organization, the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevins, and he headed Burgundy’s Pinot Noir Association. He was called “the General” not just because whenever a wine writer would visit his domaine Louis-Michel would inevitably talk about the long line of highly decorated Liger-Belair military officers; Louis-Michel had a reputation for swaggering and barking orders.

A domaine is a winery that bottles its own wines. Louis-Michel’s bottle-labeling operation was in a second-story room at the north end of his stately domaine. The window afforded a direct view into the boomerang-shaped alley and the Domaine.
Louis-Michel was often at work in that room and found himself staring at the gates of the DRC with complex feelings.

Louis-Michel recognized that Aubert de Villaine was a
grand monsieur
, but it was no secret that Louis-Michel believed the de Villaines had taken advantage of his family decades earlier. In 1933, when his great grandparents fell on hard times, the Domaine bought La Tâche away from his family for what amounted to the proverbial steal. That Romanée-Conti was the undisputed greatest wine in the world, while Louis-Michel’s top wine, La Romanée, which came from the vineyard immediately next to the Romanée-Conti vines, was perceived as a less prestigious wine also greatly antagonized Louis-Michel.

The Grand Monsieur was aware that the General’s feelings about him and the DRC were nuanced. Monsieur de Villaine himself had been ambitious in his youth. Young masters of domaines must have ambition, he thought, for ambition drives excellence. The Grand Monsieur also empathized with Louis-Michel’s heartache over the history between his family’s Domaine and the Liger-Belairs. Monsieur de Villaine suspected he would feel the same way if he had inherited the Liger-Belair legacy.

Truth was, the Grand Monsieur saw a lot of his younger self in Louis-Michel. He respected the young vigneron. It was Monsieur de Villaine who had recommended that Louis-Michel be exalted to head the Pinot Noir Association, which Monsieur de Villaine himself had started. After all, Louis-Michel had restored his domaine and wines to greatness. Louis-Michel had chosen to come back to Vosne; he lived in the domaine. He wasn’t some absentee
gérant
. Louis-Michel tended to the
enfants
his family had virtually abandoned. Monsieur de Villaine believed the best of Louis-Michel and saw his ambitions as good for all of Burgundy.

On many nights, possibly this one, as Monsieur de Villaine left the DRC for the evening, the General was often up in his bottling room and watching Monsieur de Villaine drive away from the Domaine that now possessed some of the most renowned vines that had once belonged to the Liger-Belairs, and thereby the storied reputation, that had once belonged to Louis-Michel’s family. The General could not help envision a day when he would buy back the vines that the de Villaines had acquired from his ancestors.

The next plaque Aubert passed was on the wall of a striking gray stone prerevolutionary mansion behind a spectacular ornate gate that had oxidized green. Both the building and the garden next to it were wrapped in ivy and in disrepair. It was illuminated by one of the very few streetlamps in the village. In the soft sad light, as snow flurries fell, it appeared like a beautiful illustration from a forgotten fairy tale:

This property belonged to the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, acquired by the
société civile
at Monsieur de Villaine’s direction. When asked such things—and he was asked often—Monsieur de Villaine would say that to fully appreciate the wines
of Burgundy one must understand the history of the place. The vines and the
terroir
are critical, yes, but so is man. Man and his personality bring as much flavor to the wines as anything else.

The Prince de Conti, his heroics, his revolutionary schemes—why, the legend of how he outsmarted the Madame de Pompadour to win the vineyard alone—was worth the price the Domaine had paid for the historic property. How could the DRC not have seized the chance to own the winery once owned by the very prince from whom the Domaine and its crown jewel vineyard takes its name—the man who gives Romanée-Conti so much of its sensuality and power, its balance and complexity?

Just before leaving the village, the Grand Monsieur passed a white stone mansion roofed in blue tile. It was an understatedly rich beauty that, fittingly enough, could not be ignored. The mansion exuded an aura of power and elegant femininity, as did its name: Les Genevrières, property of Domaine Leroy. Monsieur de Villaine noticed a silver Range Rover parked in the drive. Her assistant—
God help that man
, he thought—was there. Meaning it was very likely she was there.

The Domaine Leroy did not have a plaque. It would not have been unfair to suspect that this was because the domaine’s owner, Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy, had refused to install one, thinking that such a marker was too small. Instead, Les Genevrières was painted in large flowery script on the wall out front.

Madame Leroy was one of two daughters of Henri Leroy. Throughout Burgundy, Monsieur Leroy, now long since deceased, was still held in high regard. Aubert de Villaine greatly admired him; he felt that he learned a great deal from Monsieur Leroy and that he owed much to him, including one of the jobs Monsieur de
Villaine had as a young man in the United States. Thus indirectly Monsieur Leroy had played a role in bringing the Grand Monsieur together with his wife.

Leroy’s daughter Marcelle Bize-Leroy, who had succeeded him, had created quite a different reputation for herself. She was known throughout Burgundy, really throughout the wine world, famously, or depending on your view, infamously, by the nickname her father had given her, “Lalou.”

Lalou sounds like the name for someone who, metaphorically if not literally, skips about delivering cupcakes and smiles. Lalou is the name for a person whom everyone knows well and likes. Perhaps then, at one time, the name suited her. According to her considerable reputation, this Lalou was a rarely seen enigma, mostly respected and absolutely feared. She loomed over Burgundy like Leona Helmsley—the intimidating businesswoman who with her husband owned New York’s Helmsley Palace hotel and many other properties and struck terror in her staffers. Helmsley had a reputation for being extremely demanding and not especially generous, rarely if ever giving her staff a holiday bonus; Lalou had a similar reputation.

When the de Villaine side of the partnership handed Monsieur de Villaine the keys to the Domaine and made him their director in 1974, that same year the Leroys appointed Lalou their
gérant
. However, because of things she denied but were proven in court, near the end of 1991 her keys had been yanked away. By order of the court and decree of shareholder vote, by her own sister, Pauline, Lalou was stripped of her management role at the Domaine.