Digging for Treasure

It's surprising the stories you run into. Sometimes they're better than those in the book. We were Stuttgart where the German edition of Wine & War: the French, the Nazis and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure was coming out. Our publisher, Klett-Cotta was staging a dinner for us and had asked if we would be willing to sign a few copies. "Your book has been a big hit here," he said.

As we were signing, a couple and their two children approached our table and introduced themselves. "We don't mean to interrupt," the woman said, "but we read Wine & War and really enjoyed it . . . especially your description of how the French hid their wines from the Germans." Written in 2001, our book was the first to describe how wine producers struggled to survive under the Nazi occupation. It had done far better than anyone expected and had become an international best-seller, especially in Germany.

"But now we have a story for you," couple added. We stopped what we were doing and waited.

"Our grandfather had a farm in Burgundy," they explained. "He also had a beautiful wine cellar with some of the loveliest wines you can imagine, Burgundies of course and the best Bordeaux. But when war was declared and he heard that German troops were on their way, he nearly panicked. The thought of losing all his precious bottles to the enemy was more than he could bear."

We could guess what happened next. In Wine & War, we told how winemakers built false walls in their cellars to hide their wines, or concealed their bottles under trash heaps. One producer went so far as to dump his bottles in a pond in front of his château, only to react in horror when the wine labels came floating to the top. The Germans were not amused.

"What our grandfather did was cart all of his wines out into his farm field and bury them. He dug a great big hole, put the bottles in and covered them up." The Germans never discovered them.

"Sadly, Grandpa died before the war ended, before he could tell us where he buried his wine. So every summer, like now when we go on vacation, we head to Grandpa's farm with our shovels and start digging. We haven't found anything yet but we keep trying."

How we wish we'd had that story for our book.