Wine And War: The French, The Nazis, And The Ba... May 2026

: 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.

: 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. Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Ba...

: Some figures, like Bordeaux merchant Louis Eschenauer, were convicted and imprisoned after the war for doing extensive business with the enemy. : Winemakers sometimes mislabeled their worst wines as

: 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 : The collaborationist government sometimes acted to keep

: 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.

The book also addresses the sensitive reality of collaboration during the occupation.