Billionaire’s Vinegar the movie

Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey is to star in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a film based on a book of the same name which details one of the world’s most infamous wine frauds. The book, by Benjamin Wallace details how wine collectors were duped into believing they were buying bottles of wine that had once belonged to US president Thomas Jefferson back in the 1980s.

At the centre of the story is a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux with the initials ThJ etched in the glass, allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, bought for $156,000 at auction in 1985 by publisher Malcolm Forbes. In 1987, US billionaire Bill Koch bought four bottles of 1787 Château Lafite engraved “Th.J” from German wine dealer Hardy Rodenstock for around US$500,000. Several lawsuits brought by Koch ensued.

The rights to the film were sold to Sony in 2008, before the book was published.