Read Online Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine by Maximillian Potter - Free Book Online

vineyards Duvault-Blochet had assembled.
    In the wake of Duvault-Blochet’s death in 1874, his holdingshad been divvied among the family, some of whom were inclined to sell off the vineyards to the highest bidder—family or not. Edmond could not abide the fractionalization of the family’s holdings. He formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, Jacques Chambon. Together they strategized; they appeased and bought out cousins in order to keep the vineyards united in the family, equally divided between the two of them, under one domaine—a domaine that Edmond named after its crown jewel, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC).
    Because Jacques had no desire to manage the day-to-day running of the Domaine, in 1911 Edmond became something of a father for the third time. He took on the role of
gérant
, director, of the family’s vineyards. Edmond did not view the responsibility as a job; it was more of a sacred duty.
    To help him manage the DRC, he hired a retired army officer. On paper, Monsieur Clin was an odd choice to be sure. Clin didn’t know much more than Edmond about tending vines. Edmond, however, went on instinct. He liked that Clin had been an organized, disciplined, and committed French army officer. Clin was a man who had done everything in his power to protect the men on his watch. Edmond astutely sensed that Clin would apply the same dedication to the vines. What’s more, Edmond had rightly gotten the impression that in the unlikely event Monsieur Clin would ever slack, Madame Clin would smooth out his wrinkles.
    In the summer of 1914, with baby Jean still weak and Marie-Dominique even weaker, the Domaine’s grapes were ripening into what promised to be a spectacular harvest. Balancing all this, Edmond undoubtedly realized, would test him in ways he didn’t imagine. Then something more unexpected occurred and Edmond had to leave it all behind.
    The Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife hadbeen fatally shot on a stone bridge in Sarajevo. The assassination, triggered by long-festering tensions, galvanized alliances in what everyone thought would be “the war to end all wars,” and Edmond went off to defend his country against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. About a year into his deployment, Edmond received notice that his wife had died, at the age of thirty-two.
    Edmond had come to accept grieving over fallen soldiers. That was war. But to return home, a thirty-three-year-old widowed father of two motherless sons—that was a hell he had never fathomed. Yet he carried on, very much in a spirit that would have made Monsieur Duvault-Blochet proud, fully dedicated to raising his two sons and safeguarding the Domaine his wife had left him. He couldn’t save her, but he could ensure that the Domaine was protected.

    “And how are the
enfants
?” Edmond asked Madame Clin.
    Coming along just fine, Monsieur de Villaine, she said. You will see. She spoke like a proud parent. She tussled Aubert’s hair.
    Naturally, there was some talk about Edmond and Aubert’s trip from Moulins. Because the Domaine then rarely earned a profit and in fact was a money pit, it was necessary for the de Villaines to continue to work their considerable cattle farm in Moulins, for income to subsidize the winery.
    Edmond had a routine when he came to the Domaine: First, he visited the stables. As far as little Aubert was concerned, the horses were the best part of his visits to the Domaine. They reminded him of the American West and the cowboys that so fascinated him. He had thought of cowboys, too, every timehe had seen U.S. soldiers riding out of France after rescuing his country from the Germans.
    That spring marked two years since the end of World War II, and the Germans’ surrender to Allied forces among the war-ravaged champagne vineyards in Reims, the largest city on France’s Western Front. Little Aubert admired the spirit and grit of the heroic Americans.
    In the Domaine’s stable, the horses that