Wine And War: The French, The Nazis And The Battle For France's Greatest Treasure Part 12

From the outside, Eagle's Nest was dull, almost nondescript, not unlike a bunker. Bernard realized at once it would not be easy getting inside. The entrance, a steel door, was jammed. Tugging on it availed nothing, and sledgehammers had no effect either. Bernard stood aside as engineers set off a small charge of explosives. When the smoke and dust had cleared, the door stood slightly ajar. Everyone squeezed through; Bernard headed for the cave.

Once again, there was a door to open. Like the first, it refused to give, but finally Bernard forced his way through.

Inside was dark. Bernard switched on his flashlight. It took him only a few seconds to realize what was there. He shouted for the others to come. "You're not going to believe this!" he said. Wherever Bernard pointed his flashlight, there were bottles, some in wooden cases, others on iron racks.

The other men rushed in with their flashlights; the sight before them was overwhelming. It was an enormous room filled from floor to ceiling with wine. "There was every great wine I had ever heard of, every legendary vintage," Bernard later said. "Everything that had been made by the Rothschilds was there, the Lafites, the Moutons. The Bordeaux were just extraordinary."

Bernard made a quick calculation. There had to be at least a half million bottles, many of them magnums.

The Bordeaux, however, were only part of it. There was also outstanding Burgundies as well as rare ports and cognacs dating from the nineteenth century. Bottles from every major champagne house were there too: Krug, Bollinger, Mot, Piper-Heidsieck and Pommery, all of the grand marques. And then Bernard spotted Lanson, the house his uncle owned. "I helped make that champagne," Bernard thought to himself.

But that was not what surprised him most. "What I really remember is the 1928 Salon, that unforgettable champagne. It was so good and there were only minute quant.i.ties of it." Nearly five years earlier, Nonancourt had watched Gring's men haul that very champagne away when he was working at Delamotte, a champagne house across the street from Salon.

Bernard touched some of the bottles as if to convince himself it was real. Then he started to laugh. Some of the champagne, he saw, was little more than plonk. There were huge numbers of bottles stamped "Reserved for the Wehrmacht"; others were labeled only Category A, B or C to designate quality. They represented one-third of all the sales of champagne from 1937 through 1940, an amount the Wehrmacht had requisitioned to "maintain the morale of its troops." Those bottles, Bernard knew, were ones producers used to get rid of their worst champagne.

Now, Bernard had a problem to solve: how to get a half million bottles of wine down a mountain. He called to the engineers. "Are you sure that elevator isn't working? Are you positive there's no way to fix it?" They shook their heads, explaining that the damage was so extensive that repairing it required more equipment than they were carrying.

Then Bernard remembered a certain group of men who knew how to handle things carefully, especially in the most difficult circ.u.mstances. He radioed for medics. "And bring all the stretchers you can find," he said.

What happened next const.i.tuted one of the most bizarre wartime evacuations ever mounted, an exercise that would involve more than two hundred soldiers and take several days to complete. Cases of wine were lugged out of Eagle's Nest and strapped onto the stretchers. With help from the Alpine team, the stretchers were carefully lowered a few hundred meters from the peak to where pairs of stretcher-bearers waited below. The stretchers were then carried slowly down the mountain to where tanks, trucks and other military vehicles were waiting. Bernard scrambled to get ahead, stopping at times to watch as the strange procession of stretchers, each one loaded with wine, wound its way down the slope.

Bernard reached his tank just before the first stretcher of wine arrived. "Bring that one over here," he ordered, motioning the stretcher-bearers to his tank. "Faites le plein [fill 'er up]," he said. The men lifted a case off the stretcher and handed it to Bernard on the turret. It was a case of 1928 Salon champagne.

As more stretchers arrived, the same astonis.h.i.+ng scene repeated itself. Soldiers stripped their tanks and trucks of everything that was not essential, tossing out clothes, tools, even extra ammunition, to make room for the new cargo. Some of the men emptied their canteens and refilled them with such legendary greats as Latour '29, Mouton '34 and Lafite '37.

It was quite a party. As the French flag was raised over Eagle's Nest, Bernard opened his first bottle of Salon '28 and lifted it in a toast. The soldiers called it le repos du guerrier, or the warrior's break between battles.

One last skirmish lay ahead. Their American "cousins" had just arrived in Berchtesgaden and they were less than pleased to see that the French had beaten them there. The Americans had always a.s.sumed they would get to Berchtesgaden first. To be outmaneuvered, outfoxed by a bunch of guys who were officially under their command galled them.

Bernard and his men were not terribly concerned. By then, most were well into their celebration and they were not about to let some sore losers spoil the party, especially since there was more than enough booze to go around. It did not take the Americans long to realize that. There were wine cellars everywhere. Nearly every villa had its own well-stocked cave. The new arrivals found one that belonged to Field Marshal Gring. It was bursting with more than 10,000 bottles. Soon, about the only sound that could be heard was the popping of corks.

One American, however, was in no mood to celebrate. General Wade Haislip, commander of the 21st Army Corps, had just arrived in Berchtesgaden and the first thing he saw was the French Tricolore flying above Eagle's Nest. He was angry and embarra.s.sed.

"You were under our orders and you still are," he barked at General Philippe Leclerc. "Get that flag down and put the Stars and Stripes up!"

Leclerc did as he was ordered, then shrugged. What did it matter? He knew who had won the race.

Not long afterward, he ran into one of his group commanders, General Paul de Langlade.

"Well, it's done," said Leclerc. "It's been a long and hard road but it's ended well, wouldn't you say?"

Langlade nodded and smiled. "G.o.d loves the French."

TEN.

The Collaborator IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE LOUIS Eschenauer.

"He was a big man with a big cigar and an even bigger personality," Jean Miailhe said. "Everyone knew Uncle Louis."

Uncle Louis was Bordeaux's most prominent wine merchant, an indefatigable negociant who bought wine in bulk, bottled it and then sold it to customers throughout the world. He was fluent in English, French, German and Russian, and wrote his own business letters in those languages. He knew as much about the wine business as anyone in Bordeaux. A typical day would find him visiting several chteaux, tasting their wines and negotiating what he felt was a "fair" price, as well as dealing with piles of correspondence and orders and overseeing bottling, packing and s.h.i.+pping. Uncle Louis was so successful and made so much money that he rarely had to borrow from a bank. He would buy up a grower's entire crop and pay cash on the barrelhead.

"Eschenauer was very talented, a real expert," said Heinz Bmers, Jr., who, like his father the Bordeaux weinfhrer, knew and worked with Louis. "He could detect the slightest nuances and flaws in wines. During the war, he and my father would go out and taste dozens of wines together. They trusted each other's judgment and were very good friends."

It was that friends.h.i.+p and his close ties with the German leaders.h.i.+p that enabled Eschenauer to greatly increase his fortune during the war by selling wine to the Third Reich.

It also got him into trouble. After the war, he was arrested and put on trial for economic collaboration.

Although the trial took place in 1945, many in France still feel it is too sensitive or embarra.s.sing to talk about. It is a chapter of history they prefer to forget, a period when more than 160,000 people were brought to trial or investigated for collaborating with the enemy. Even President Charles de Gaulle worried about that period and, for the sake of national unity, sought to portray France as "a nation of resisters."

The Eschenauer case, however, raises uncomfortable questions about that portrait, questions which are still being debated. Was he a collaborator? Did he use his connections with the Germans to enrich himself illegally? Or was he merely one of many people in France who simply did what they had to in order to survive?

Those who knew and admired Uncle Louis argue that it is inappropriate and distasteful to be digging up a man's past when he is no longer able to defend himself. Let him rest in peace, they say, and let the rest of us live in peace.

That att.i.tude is shared by the French legal system. Doc.u.ments relating to Eschenauer's trial, part of which was held behind closed doors, have been sealed by a law that protects a person's privacy by restricting access to personal papers until sixty years after the person's death.

Eschenauer died in 1958.

He was born in 1870. His family, which lived in Strasbourg, ran a successful wine business there until the Franco-Prussian War broke out. With Alsace about to be annexed by Germany, the family fled to Bordeaux, where they hoped it would be safer, and where Louis was born that same year.

It was a propitious move. Bordeaux's port and other commercial facilities provided the perfect setting for the family to resume business. Within a year, Maison Eschenauer had become one of the best-known names in the region.

On the personal front, however, it was a much different story. Louis's father was a womanizer, something Louis's mother made sure her son realized. One of Louis's earliest memories was seeing his mother in tears because his father was with another woman. Often, she would drag him out of the house and down to the port as she searched the bars and dives for her husband. "I want you to see what your father is doing; I want to show you the horror of debauchery," Louis remembered his mother telling him. For a little boy, it was a traumatic experience, he later told friends, one that would stay with him and affect his relations.h.i.+ps with women for as long as he lived. He would one day take a mistress but never marry her or legally acknowledge the child he fathered. He couldn't, he said, because his mother would not approve.

In 1900, when his father died, the twenty-nine-year-old Louis took over Maison Eschenauer and turned it into one of the leading negociant firms in Bordeaux by specializing in fine wines, the grands crus. He was shrewd and exacting, and ran his firm with flair and ingenuity. During Prohibition in the 1920s, he managed to get wine to his customers in the United States by bottling it in perfume bottles. The best wines, such as Chteau Ausone and Chteau Suduiraut, were s.h.i.+pped in genuine crystal. Dry white wines were labeled "water from the Roman baths."

In social circles, Uncle Louis, as he was popularly known, was considered a warm and generous host. Women adored him and friends practically begged for reservations at Le Chapon Fin, the restaurant Eschenauer owned. "You couldn't get in unless you had a zest of British humor, a rosette of the Legion of Honor or a personal invitation from Uncle Louis," one Bordelais recalled. The restaurant featured the greatest wines of France and a clientele to match. King Alfonso XIII of Spain and England's Prince of Wales were just two of his regular customers. Alfonso was particularly partial to the truffles served in silver cups alongside delicately prepared meat dishes. The Prince of Wales gravitated between ecrevisses la nage (fresh water crayfish floating in its sauce) and lievre la royale (hare cooked in the royal style). Because Eschenauer was called the "king of Bordeaux," visiting royalty felt right at home.

As the region's most prominent wine merchant, Eschenauer presided over a society which, in many ways, was secretive and closed. The Chartrons, whose name was derived from the Quai des Chartrons, the strip along the port where they lived and worked, were negociants of English and German descent, Protestants whose ancestors had settled and begun trading in the port city two hundred years earlier. They had names like Lawton, Johnston, Kressman and Schler. They intermarried, played tennis and golf, spoke English and German as well as French, and they worked a.s.siduously to maintain contact with their countries of origin, making annual pilgrimages to their ancestral homes to place flowers on family graves. Behind the closed and nondescript doors of the Quai des Chartrons, they lived in grand apartments of restrained elegance, surrounded by antique mahogany and family silver.

Although Eschenauer considered himself "one of them," that was not his style. He lived away from the Quai in a mansion decorated with modern paintings. Instead of golf and tennis, he preferred horse racing; he owned several prize-winning horses, which, he said, helped make up for a family life that he did not have.

Cars were another pa.s.sion. He owned one of the first in Bordeaux and had several custom-built for him. The flashy cars attracted a great deal of attention, especially as he cruised down the coast to the resort of Biarritz, where he had installed his mistress.

"Louis had a real love of luxury," said Florence Mothe, a Bordeaux winemaker and writer. "With his sumptuous limousines and winters spent in Egypt, he seemed like a character out of F. Scott Fitzgerald."

Eschenauer was equally flamboyant in his business life, flaunting his famous German clients and worldwide contacts. One of his closest a.s.sociates was Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Third Reich's Foreign Minister, whom Eschenauer had hired before the war to sell some of his wines in Germany. When France declared war on Germany in 1939, Eschenauer, who did more than half his business with that country, found himself in an uncomfortable position: some of his best friends and customers were now "the enemy." With exports to Germany cut off, Eschenauer was suddenly stuck with a huge stock of wine he could no longer sell.

The crisis was short-lived. In June 1940, after German forces overran France, an old friend and client came knocking on Eschenauer's door. It was Heinz Bmers, head of Reidemeister & Ulrichs, Germany's largest wine company. Bmers told Louis he had just taken on a new job: buying wine for the Third Reich. "It can be profitable for both of us because I am here not just for the Third Reich; I have permission to buy wine for my own company as well," he said, "so we can continue our regular business as usual, plus you can sell straight to the German government." Bmers explained that before he accepted the job of weinfhrer, he had insisted on total independence with no restrictions on how much money he could exchange to buy for his personal business. He added that France, now an occupied country, would only be permitted to sell its wine to Germany; all of the other usual export markets such as Britain, Russia and the United States were being cut off.

Louis needed no convincing. He realized that the arrangement Bmers was proposing was not only practical but potentially lucrative-for both of them. A deal was quickly worked out as other wine merchants looked on with envy.

The new political and economic realities governing France seemed to agree with Eschenauer, despite the traumas of occupation. Like most other Chartrons, he was politically conservative and leery of anything that might impede business. What scared him most was the specter of communism, social upheaval and labor unrest.

It was almost with a sigh of relief that he greeted the return of Marshal Philippe Petain in 1940 to head the country. Petain's hatred of communism and decision to collaborate with Germany, Louis felt, offered the best a.s.surance that France would avoid the kind of economic stagnation that had crippled the country in the years before the war.

Collaboration, at that time, had few sinister overtones. It signified the working relations.h.i.+ps Petain wished to establish with Berlin which would help France rebuild itself. In that spirit, Eschenauer joined Groupe Collaboration, an organization that supported Petain's program and took its name from the Marshal's speeches advocating Franco-German collaboration. Its members.h.i.+p-as Louis would come to regret-also contained hundreds of people whose political sympathies were distinctly fascist and pro-n.a.z.i. Uncle Louis donated 10,000 French francs to the Groupe.

By 1942, the meaning of collaboration had changed dramatically. It meant hunting down and deporting immigrant Jews, arresting communists and other perceived enemies of the state-doing whatever Berlin wanted in hopes that France would be guaranteed a favorable position in a new Europe dominated by Germany.

Did Eschenauer realize what was happening? If he did, would it have made any difference?

"Business was his first priority," explained Florence Mothe, who knew Eschenauer and whose stepfather worked for Uncle Louis. "But he was not an anti-Semite. I never heard him say one word against Jews." Indeed, he was a friend of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who was later to defend him.

When the Germans tried to requisition the wine of Chteaux Lafite-Rothschild and Mouton-Rothschild, Eschenauer urged Bmers step in and prevent it from happening. The weinfhrer agreed. He had already a.s.sured the Bordelais he would do all in his power to protect their best wines. The Rothschilds' wine remained untouched. Baron Philippe, who knew and worked with both Eschenauer and Bmers, later confirmed the story to Florence Mothe and referred to Uncle Louis in his book as "a great friend of mine."

And yet, with the Germans seizing other Jewish wine estates, which they then sold to non-Jews, Eschenauer was quick to take advantage. He formed a company, the Societe des Grands Vins Franais, which allowed him to discreetly buy up such properties.

"He was an opportunist, absolutely," Mothe said, "but he was not pro-n.a.z.i; he was just pro-Louis. For Louis, business always came first."

But many in the Bordeaux business community considered Eschenauer's behavior provocative. They resented the way he flaunted his German friends.h.i.+ps. Frequently he invited n.a.z.i officials such as Heinz Bmers to join him for an afternoon at the racetrack. Louis's distant cousin Ernst Khnemann, the German officer who commanded the city's port and submarine base there, was an even more frequent guest. The two were very close because Khnemann was also in the wine business and head of the Berlin wine company Julius Ewest. Often, they could be seen strolling arm in arm beside the track, a sight many French spectators found infuriating and disgusting.

"They may have been cousins," recalled one Bordeaux wine merchant, "but it created a scandal in Bordeaux to see this 'emperor of the Chartrons' on intimate terms with the commander of the naval base."

Off the track, the cousins could be seen at Uncle Louis's restaurant, where other German officials, many of them sent by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, were being entertained as well. To accommodate its German clientele, Le Chapon Fin was granted a number of exemptions. The restaurant was allowed to serve wine around the clock; it was not restricted to certain hours as other restaurants were because of rationing; nor did it have to post four different fixed-price menus daily with meals for 18, 50, 70 and 100 francs. It could charge what it wished. Although meat and fish were almost impossible to come by elsewhere, one could still dine very well at Le Chapon Fin.

Such privileges left a bitter taste in the mouths of other Bordelais. While they struggled to survive, Uncle Louis continued living the high life.

By the summer of 1944, nearly everyone realized that Germany was about to collapse. Even Heinz Bmers, who was visiting his family in Bavaria, knew the end was in sight and had refused to return to Bordeaux.

After D-Day, as one town after another was liberated, swastikas began appearing over doors of suspected collaborators. The handwriting was literally on the wall; but Louis Eschenauer did not seem to see it.

Despite warnings from Charles de Gaulle that those who collaborated with the enemy would be punished, Louis's glamorous lifestyle continued unchanged. There were trips to Biarritz in his custom-built cars (unlike others, he still seemed to be able to get fuel), afternoons at the racetrack with his German friends and lunch nearly every day with Captain Ernst Khnemann.

It was probably during one of those lunches that Khnemann informed Eschenauer that with the Allies sweeping into France, it would not be long before German forces occupying Bordeaux would be pulling out. That may have been when Uncle Louis first realized the tide truly had turned and that he could be in serious trouble.

He watched with growing anxiety as German troops, caught on the run, lashed out with atrocities and ma.s.s executions, and he saw how the Resistance struck back, chasing down suspected collaborators as well as Germans.

That August, Eschenauer learned that the Germans planned to blow up the port of Bordeaux just before they evacuated the city. When a local politician with connections to the Resistance pleaded with him to use his influence to try to save the facility, Louis jumped at the chance. It was a way to make sure he was on the winning side and it might even save his neck. Besides, it was definitely the best way to protect business. He needed that port to s.h.i.+p his wine.

Eschenauer immediately contacted Khnemann to set up an emergency meeting with other German officers. There, he argued that destroying the port would be a big mistake, that it served no military purpose and that many innocent people could be hurt or killed. What neither Eschenauer nor the Resistance realized was that the Germans probably would not have been able to destroy the port anyway because most of their detonators had been sabotaged just a few days earlier by a German soldier who opposed the plan. But that was a secret the Germans were keeping to themselves. In a bluff, they promised not to blow up the port if their troops were allowed to leave Bordeaux peacefully without being fired at. The Resistance agreed.

There was one other demand by Khnemann: no harm was to come to Uncle Louis; he was to be left alone after the troops departed.

At 6:30 P.M. on August 26, French flags went up around the port to signal that an agreement had been reached. Eschenauer and Khnemann were together at Louis's home at that moment, saying their farewells over a bottle of wine.

By the following day, the Germans were gone. Eschenauer breathed a sigh of relief.

Four days later, he was arrested by the Resistance.

Eschenauer's arrest followed that of Marshal Philippe Petain, who had resigned a week and a half earlier. Taken into "protective custody" by the Germans, who may have been trying to keep Vichy alive, the eighty-eight-year-old Marshal was forcibly moved to Germany from one castle to another. It was particularly humiliating because he had vowed he would never leave French soil. Before his departure, he was given one last chance to address the people of France.

"When this message reaches you, I shall no longer be free," he said. "I had only one goal, to protect you from the worst. Sometimes my words or acts must have surprised you. You may be sure that they were more painful for me than they were even for you. But I have never ceased to fight with all my might against all that threatened you. I have led you out of certain dangers; but there were some, alas, which I could not spare you."

Although the new French government under Charles de Gaulle hoped Petain would stay away from France, the old Marshal was determined to return. He said he wanted to defend his role as head of the Vichy government. In June of the following year, he did return. He was promptly arrested, charged with treason and put on trial.

Appearing before the High Court of Justice, Petain, who had been ignored by de Gaulle when he offered to hand over his powers, put up a spirited defense, claiming that he had tried to act as a s.h.i.+eld to protect the French people. "Every day, a dagger at my throat, I struggled against the enemy's demands," he said. "History will tell all that I spared you, though my adversaries think only of reproaching me for the inevitable. . . . While General de Gaulle carried on the struggle outside our frontiers, I prepared the way for liberation by preserving France, suffering but alive."

Many agreed with him and still do. May-Eliane Miailhe de Lencquesaing is one of them. "People say it was de Gaulle who liberated France, but de Gaulle was nothing without the Americans," she said. "It was Petain who stayed, who gave himself to the country, and who kept us from suffering much worse. Some people say he was on the German side. No; he hated the n.a.z.is."

Nevertheless, Petain was found guilty and sentenced to death. Several weeks later, de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Others in the Vichy government, like Prime Minister Pierre Laval, were tried and executed.

The prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, or worse, had left Louis Eschenauer severely shaken. After helping to save Bordeaux from the Germans, being arrested had come as a great shock. If the court had been willing to sentence Marshal Petain to death, what would it do to him? he wondered.

As he languished in a prison cell awaiting trial, the seventy-five-year-old wine merchant learned of the summary judgments being handed down by various tribunals. Women who had consorted with Germans were given what Gertrude Stein called the "coiffure '44"-their heads were shaved. Businessmen, especially those in northwestern France, who had committed the very crime Eschenauer was charged with-economic collaboration-were marched before firing squads and executed.

It was a time of retribution, of settling old scores. At least 4,500 persons were summarily put to death by tribunals set up by the Resistance.

"No Resistance historian should try to minimize the incidents of injustice, malicious indictment and personal vendetta," said historian H. R. Kedward. "In the months following liberation, hardly a day pa.s.sed without some new revelation of the horrors of torture, deportation and execution for which the Gestapo and Milice had been responsible. As the shallow graves of mutilated resistors were found in country areas surrounding most of the large towns, and the cellars of the Gestapo revealed their inhuman secrets, the popular demand for retributive justice against the collaborators grew more insistent."

In Bordeaux, according to one winegrower who knew Louis Eschenauer, "there was a 'healthy' denouncing of others. No one could be sure where the finger would point next."

As purges continued, about 160,000 people were formally charged with collaboration by the new French government. More than 7,000 were condemned to death, although the sentence was carried out in only 800 cases; another 38,000 were given prison terms.

Fearing the situation was slipping out of control, a spokesman for the Minister of Justice, in March 1945, went on the radio to remind the people of France that doing business with the enemy did not necessarily const.i.tute a crime. "Not all of it is of the same character," he said. Some of it may be interpreted as "normal" and "legitimate." The law against economic collaboration, the spokesman added, is "aimed at punis.h.i.+ng the guilty and not disturbing the innocent."

In September, the regional director of Economic Supervision in Bordeaux went even further. In a letter to courts of law in his area, he encouraged them to "conclude their cases and investigations as soon as possible."

It was in that growing atmosphere of "let's put this behind us" that the trial of Louis Eschenauer began on November 9, 1945. It had been just over a year since his arrest. Eschenauer appeared nervous and frail. A psychiatrist who examined him testified that he was suffering from severe depression. The only good news for Uncle Louis was that he would not be executed. An investigating magistrate had determined that Eschenauer's crime of "trafficking with the enemy" had not affected the security of the state and that, therefore, he should not be tried in a military court or by any other body that could apply the death penalty.

Eschenauer was charged with three counts of economic collaboration: first, that he "voluntarily entered into correspondence and relations with agents of the enemy"; second, that he "illegally conducted commerce" which provided France's enemy with "important economic support"; and third, that he "knowingly gave direct or indirect a.s.sistance to Germany that could bring harm to the unity of the nation."

On the stand, Eschenauer denied the charges. "I am not a collaborator," he said. "I did business with the Germans because I had to. I had to save my business. I also wanted to protect the interests of other negociants and winegrowers."

Eschenauer testified that his "intimate relations.h.i.+p" with weinfhrer Heinz Bmers enabled him to prevent the Germans from getting their hands on Bordeaux's best wines, such as Chteaux Lafite-Rothschild and Mouton-Rothschild. His friends.h.i.+p with Ernst Khnemann, he said, helped him persuade the Germans not to destroy the port of Bordeaux and other parts of the city. "I admit that I was well acquainted with many of the Germans here, but I also knew how to trick them and string them along," he said. "I despised the n.a.z.is; I never helped them. It was the Allies I was trying to help."

He also reminded the court of his role on a committee to help refugees in Bordeaux during the Phony War of 193940. His role, however, did not go much further than accepting a check from American banker Clarence Dillon and turning it over to certain charities.

Eschenauer's testimony seemed to be the desperate words of a tired and frightened old man, a man who, in a moment of weakness, was prepared to say anything to save his neck, even if it meant turning against Heinz Bmers, whom Eschenauer, just before his trial, described as a "close family friend."

In court, Eschenauer branded Bmers a "vulture," a "violent man" who was trying to take over his business and who nearly caused him to have a nervous breakdown. "He thought that because I was an old bachelor, my business should go to him. He dreamed of becoming master of Maison Eschenauer after my death."

Eschenauer complained that he had been under constant pressure from Bmers to supply him with more wine. "He promised he would buy everything from me, but I said that was unfair and that he should buy from other negociants as well."

Portraying himself as a hero who "saved Bordeaux's wines," Louis explained that he tried to act as a buffer between Bmers and the wine community. "I prevented him from seizing the best wines," he said. "Instead, I gave him duds, junk."

Junk? According to court records, some of the wines Eschenauer sold to Bmers in 1944 included: Chteau Margaux 1939 (2,400 bottles), Chteau Mouton-Rothschild 1939 (3,000 bottles), Chteau Ausone 1939 (3,600 bottles), Chteau Rausan-Segla (4,500 bottles), Chteau La Lagune (6,000 bottles), Chteau Cos d'Estournel 1937 (2,400 bottles), Chteau Brane-Cantenac 1937 (2,000 bottles), Chteau Talbot 1939 (8,000 bottles).