Wine and War, Don and Petie Kladstrup

My mother gave me a copy of Wine and War after I returned home from a summer teaching English in France in 2007. I had stayed at Chateau d’Azé, Saone-et-Loire in the Burgandy region of France, which is now rented out to the company, Nacel, running the camp. Azé is outside of Mâcon, famous for decent, and relatively inexpensive, white and red wines (look for Maison Louis Jadot, Mâcon Villages, for a taste of a white). I do not know much about wine, nor do I always enjoy drinking wine, but the stories in Don and Petie Kladstrup’s Wine and War were very real to me, some of them akin to the stories the Chateau d’Azé property manager shared with our group of counselors about the very buildings, grounds and vineyards we slept and taught within.

The Kladstrup’s write about how France saved their greatest treasure of wine during World War II, Nazi occupation, but they also tell stories of families, across borders, struggling to follow a moral path and to save each other. The book is certainly filled with fascinating and wonderfully powerful stories about winegrowers burying wine in gardens or building fake walls within caves (wine storage building, some winegrowers also buried wine in les grottes (caves in English) as well). It is also about a certain pride of people, who deceived Nazi leaders demanding wine, labeling poor quality bottles of wine with expensive, high demand labels. It is about the French soldiers who laughed and celebrated the deception while discovering the bad wine at the Eagle’s Nest, one of Hitler’s personal properties. Within these stories of French deception, readers will discover far more powerful accounts of soldiers, mothers, neighbors and children from many countries and backgrounds.

If you are like me, and have never felt much excitement about wine, this book will inspire you to raise a glass and learn more. It is also my inspiration for recommending Hidden in Plainview, a book about deception and ordinary lives involved with the underground railroad, as a possible book club read.