Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (18 page)

They would learn that the most exalted, the most divine Pinot Noir came from a few parcels on an east-facing slope between the village of Vosne to just beyond the community of Chambolle. Equidistant between those villages, the monks built a spectacularly humble winery, Clos de Vougeot.

In time, certainly by the fourteenth century, when the first French pope relocated the papacy from Rome to Avignon and was serving Burgundy’s finest wines, the nobles would get a taste of these wines and realize the profits to be had, and the nobles would want more of each. They began to tax the church off the best vineyards. The parcels the monks had deemed the best, on the slopes, which became known as the Slope of Gold, the nobles wanted those most of all. And they would get them.

Eventually there would be the legendary story of the Prince de Conti and King Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, at dramatic odds, both casting an eye toward the very best parcel. Then revolution.

The INAO began their process by considering this sacred, ancient history, and then considered the most recent attempts experts had made to map the delimitations into something that made modern sense. There was no question that the definitive source was the work of Dr. Jules Lavalle.

In 1855, after many years traveling throughout all of Burgundy’s appellations; after intense research in legal and historical archives, in wineries, in the vines, and tasting the wines, Lavalle
published the
Histoire et Statistique de la Vigne et des Grands Vins de la Côte d’Or
(History and Facts of the Vines and the Greatest Vines of the Côte d’Or).

Among the facts Lavalle put forth were the most detailed vineyard maps and his ranking of the best appellations and vineyards. In descending order, Lavalle’s rankings for the vineyards were:
hors ligne
,
tête de cuvée
,
1ère cuvée
,
2ème cuvée
, and
3ème cuvée.
On the maps, he crafted a color-coded key for each of his five categories. Lavalle’s conclusions were consistent with those compiled by Jean-Alexandre Cavoleau, who published
Oenologie Française
in 1827, and Dr. Denis Morelot’s 1831
Statistique de la Vigne en Côte d’Or
.

Because Lavalle leaned on Morelot and Cavoleau, who in turn relied heavily on the records and opinions of the Cistercians, it seems fair to say that after such extensive “peer review” a thousand years later, when it came to selecting the best
terroir
, the monks knew what they were talking about. Lavalle’s work, however, was the freshest, and mapped in detail. Therefore he endured as something of an expert witness on the matter of classification, which was exactly what the INAO needed.

The creation of the INAO and the push for classification were almost exclusively market driven. In the wake of the first phase of phylloxera, toward the end of the nineteenth century, burgundies were scarce and demand was high. The market was rife with fraud perpetrated by
négociants
. To fill orders, the agents were blending wines with no respect for the appellation: Wines from one village were mixed with another.

Wines from a prestigious vineyard got dumped into wines from another lesser vineyard. Unscrupulous
négociants
thought nothing of blending Pinot Noir with lesser varietals, in particular
the Gamay. (In 1395, the Duke of Burgundy, Philippe the Bold, banned the growing of Gamay because this varietal of “horrible harshness,” as he put it, was being planted in soil that could be used for tasty and more taxable Pinot Noir.)

Perhaps the most unconscionable act among the
négociants
’ unconscionable acts, these agents went so far as to produce utterly fake wine,
vins artificiels
, in the form of flavored sugar water, which contained no fruit at all. They would sell that as a burgundy or if they found themselves short on more exquisite Pinot, they’d cut what they had with
vins artificiels
.

Onto bottles filled with this plonk the
négociants
slapped the typical labels with
négociant
brand, but also, often with the name of specific vineyards. This fraud flooded the market with terrible wine, which drove down the price, and thereby the profits, for the vigneron’s legitimate wine. The
vins artificiels
business not only undercut the reputation of a vigneron’s vineyard holdings, it devalued all of the wines of Burgundy. Many
négociants
were diminishing the long-term brand of the entire region for a short-term sell. Appellation, vineyard, varietal,
terroir
: None of it mattered. For the offending
négociants
there was nothing sacred; money was the holy grail.

When the INAO was finally mandated to intervene in 1935, it was establishing government-sanctioned classifications that would serve as both market standards and legal precedent. The
négociants
wanted as little regulation as possible; the growers desperately wanted government support. (This civil war did not go unnoticed by the likes of Schoonmaker and Wildman and, naturally, worked in their favor.)

The INAO took the perspective of the vignerons and created a defined class system: Regional wines can be produced
anywhere in Burgundy. Village wines must originate from within the borders of a particular village. Wines from a specifically defined vineyard or
climat
with unique
terroir
are either
premiers crus
or the wines of the very finest
terroir
in Burgundy,
grands crus
. To misrepresent these wine classifications is a crime.

A cop’s kid, a son of Burgundy, Inspector Pageault knew there had been and always would be plenty of grifters trying to move fake bottles. The crooked
négociants
of the early twentieth century weren’t the first and they wouldn’t be the last to commit wine fraud. Fake bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti wines surfaced with regularity. As far as the police could determine, no one had a record of a crime like this one against the Domaine. Sure, vineyards and wineries have been vandalized here and there. But an act of agricultural terrorism against a vineyard, this type of extortion was unprecedented.

Inspector Pageault knew that fraudulent bottles of fine wines were a problem in that they could disturb the economy of the wine and wine auction market, and upset wealthy buyers who got ripped off. However, poisoned vines, poisoned
terroir
, this represented an attack on the sacred, unspoken communion between the vigneron and nature, between man and God. Inspector Pageault understood that this crime was an unprecedented attack on the spiritual core of Burgundy.

Pageault knew very well that
grands crus
were rare. Of the one hundred broad Burgundy appellations there were only thirty-three
grands crus
, which represented less than 2 percent of all French wines. Not surprisingly, six
grands crus
were clustered in the village appellation of Vosne. Two were in Chambolle. Whoever was behind this crime, Pageault suspected, could navigate a fine wine list, or at least knew enough to research Burgundy’s
complicated classification system. Pageault would soon learn that he was half right.

“There he is,” Prignot radioed to her backup.

It was 8:40 p.m. when Leduc arrived home from his job at the kitchen supply shop. The thirty-nine-year-old had spent the day answering questions about cabinets and countertops.

“Pierre Leduc?” Prignot asked. She and her backup approached Leduc as he entered the front gate of his apartment.

“Yeah. What can I do for you?”

Prignot identified herself, showed the stunned Leduc the warrant, and ordered him to show them to his apartment. While her colleagues seized his computer and took a mouth-swab DNA sample, Prignot questioned him.

No, Leduc insisted, he did not send a package via Colissimo to a Monsieur de Villaine in Bouzeron.

Prignot asked him to explain why he tracked a package that was sent to Monsieur Aubert de Villaine in Bouzeron. “We know you did,” she said. “That’s how we found you. You tracked the package from an IP address we traced to this computer. So if you’re lying…”

Leduc maintained he didn’t know what she was talking about. He said he’d never heard of a Monsieur de Villaine. He supposed that Prignot was referring to the fact that when Leduc went to track a package he was having shipped to his apartment, the first time he tapped in the tracking code he had accidentally entered the wrong number. He said he had been waiting on a PlayStation he’d ordered.

It was right there. The packaging for the video game console was still next to the television set.

Within hours back at the Dijon branch, the crime lab’s technical experts had scoured Leduc’s hard drive. Nothing. The guy was telling the truth. Every case Pageault had worked on, he told Prignot, had one dead end, but he couldn’t think of one with two. Bessanko and now Leduc.

As far as promising leads, the inspectors now had nothing.

Over the next week and a half, Pageault and Prignot developed no new leads. Just as Pageault began to take a hard look at the list of employees he had asked the DRC and Domaine de Vogüé to provide, on February 4 the DRC received a note addressed to Monsieur de Villaine. It was delivered via regular mail and instructed him to put one million euros in a brown paper bag, and the next evening, at midnight, leave it where he had found the two dead vines.

That the note arrived via regular mail struck police as odd. Perhaps the extortionist sensibly concluded police would be watching Colissimo—and they were. Maybe the extortionist realized that if he called Jean-Charles, as the police had tried to bait the extortionist into doing, police were prepared to trace the call—and they were, and not just on Jean-Charles’s phone. Police had tapped just about every line into the Domaine and its senior staff.

But regular mail? Evidently the extortionist had great faith in the French postal service. Also confounding the police was the fact that whoever the architect of this was had directed that the ransom be paid in cash and delivered to a vineyard. Cash in a bag? Left in the open? Why not have the payment wired into an account? That was more along the lines of what Prignot had been expecting. Even if the police took the extortionist at his or
her word, and whoever the pickup person was had no knowledge of the specifics of the poisoning—no knowledge of which vines had been attacked or how to prevent the death of more vines—certainly the police could follow that person.

Considering the extortionist had been so methodical and clever thus far, the strategy now being employed seemed uncharacteristically risky, bordering on stupid… or some kind of brilliance. Perhaps there was more going on here than met the eye, and this was all so deft that the police could not see through the plan. Maybe the extortionist was right now accomplishing his wish by rendering them all off balance and was off somewhere laughing at the idea of them scratching their heads.

Maybe the vines were not the mark and that threat was a misdirection for something else? Maybe the extortionist was not an extortionist and had a kidnapping planned? After all, whoever this was had discovered where Monsieur de Villaine lived. So, then, if a kidnapping was the ultimate goal, why not grab the monsieur there, or on his way there?