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Editorial Review:
According to Don and Petie Kladstrup in Wine & War: the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure, it was a well-known fact that Adolf Hitler did not like wine. Still, their leader's teetotalism notwithstanding, the Germans showed no distaste for French wine when they invaded France in 1940. Indeed, one of the first acts of the occupying army was to seize great stores of wine, sending tens of thousands of barrels to the Third Reich and ordering the conversion of thousands of hectares of vineyards into war production. Some French vintners, the Kladstrups write in this enjoyable study, went along with orders. Many others, however, including the heads of distinguished houses like Moe¨t et Chandon, engaged in daring and dangerous acts of resistance wherever they could. Some lied about their yields; others built false walls to hide precious vintages; and still others concocted elaborate ruses, such as sprinkling carpet dust into inferior grades of new wine to give it a musty, distinguished flavour. Not every German was fooled, and some partisans of the grape died for their troubles. But some Germans, at considerable risk to themselves, also looked the other way. The Kladstrups fill their pages with memories of the wine war from both sides of the struggle, stories sometimes sombre, sometimes amusing, that commemorate those "whose love of the grape and devotion to a way of life helped them survive and triumph over one of the darkest and most difficult chapters in French history". --Gregory McNamee
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Revealing review of a small part of French resistance Fascinating read about the desperate position the French vineyard owners found themselves in during the Second World War. With Nazis determined to pillage the vineyards, the owners resorted to every trick possible to protect their assets. With experience of defeating phylloxera in the 19th century and the preceding world war, the vineyard owners had developed a knack of finding ways to survive. The book describes an eclectic collection of motives and actions that helped the wine industry survive... more info
Vive Les Vins Francais I enjoyed this book immensely. It was factual and informative and despite being set in depressing times, an underlying humour and deviance is never far from the surface. The book is perfect for amateur wine buffs (like me) and amateur historians (like me) who are interested in daily life during World War Two. The ingenuity of the French was amazing but, after all, they were protecting their greatest asset. By the end of this book Vichy france does not come out too well but at least france lived to fight... more info
Judged the book by the cover and loved it I really enjoyed this book - great day-in-the-life and historical perspectives of the French and France during wartime. Particularly amusing to read about French forces determining which soldiers should attack through excellent vineyards (themselves) and which would attack through lesser ones (everyone else)... Highly enjoyable.
A highly enjoyable account the French wine industry in WW2 This is an amusing, but poignant account of how the French wine industry coped with the Nazi occupation (the telegrams from the French station master to his German superior had me laughing out loud!). Despite the humour it stills manages to convey the fear and hardships which were imposed on the people of France. It reads almost like a novel but each chapter is based upon interviews with the people involved. If you want an 'academic' study this is not for you, but for people who enjoy their history in a... more info
