The Thomas Jefferson’s Chateau Lafite — The Auction

(You can read the first part of this story here)

Hardy Rodenstock had only become a wine connoisseur from a little time. He was an organizer of pop art events, and years earlier he had received cases of wine as payment for a concert he had organized because the patron had run out of money to pay him.

A lucky finder

He subscribed to a German food magazine, Alles Uber Wine, and had signed up for a trip to France organized by the magazine to visit the most famous châteaux, where he met some of the owners and wine journalists. His passion for Chateau d’Yquem was born in the 1970s, and he began organizing tastings using special glasses made right for him by a friend, George Riedel.

He became famous as a finder of rare bottles. In 1989 he was at a tasting of 1929 French wines organized by a friend, who confided at the end of the evening that he had been unable to find a Chateau Auson 1929. A few weeks later, while in Scotland, Rodenstock called him to say that he had found the missing bottle. Ten years later, in 1998, he opened two bottles of Chateau d’Yquem 1784 found behind the wall, and by all accounts they looked like wines from only a few decades earlier, so well preserved they were. He seemed to have a special talent for finding unobtainable bottles, so much so that…