This book takes you on a lighthearted romp through cuisine, cooking, restaurants and wine cellars. It may even tell you more than you really want to know about the great years of Chateau d’Yquem wine, “… the ’45, the ’49 and the youngest, the ‘75’s,” at $75 a sip.
Hollywood entertainment lawyer Danny Roth and his “young, blond and fashionably gaunt wife” fly in his private jet to his ski lodge in Aspen. While are gone his wine collection is stolen.
Roth’s insurance company calls in Sam Levitt; lawyer, crime expert and wine connoisseur, and the reader is off with him to Paris, Bordeaux and Marseilles. We sample rare wines and enjoy fabulous meals with the company of the delightful and erudite Madame Costes.
I am neither a “foodie” nor an oenophile, the house red is good enough for me, but what interested me most in the Vintage Caper was the section about Marseilles, a city so often in books depicted as a place of squalor and violence.
This is a very pleasant page turner.
Mary Wood says
LATE BREAKING NEWS –
“The Ultimate Experience For the Serious Oenophile” IN THE GREEN ROOM AT THE HOTEL DU PONT
$500 per guest “The experience is limited to 96 guests” and they serve you a light lunch.
I assumed Peter Mayle’s description of the fantastically priced wines in the cellars he writes about, was the purest fancy. Today, however I got in the mail a glossy invitation to a Food & Wine Feast which will take place in nearby Wilmington. Those of my readers who have no difficulty in making ends meet will be glad to know about this.