Free Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine by Maximillian Potter Page B

After the big meeting at the Domaine, Aubert heard, the Domaine became something called a
société civile
, a corporation, and a man who had become rich in the wine trade, the patriarch of another prominent Burgundian wine family, a Monsieur Henri Leroy, was his grandfather’s new partner.
    Aubert was about five years old when he learned one day that World War II was over. A man appeared in his home and Aubert asked his mother if he was going to stay for dinner. The man was frail and sickly-looking; he appeared in need of a meal. Aubert’s mother informed her son that, yes, the man would be staying for dinner, and it was her hope that he would stay for a very long time, because this man was Aubert’s father, Henri. He had been liberated.
    “Say hello to your father,” his mother said, nudging little Aubert toward the man. “Give him a hug.”
    Aubert did as he was told.
    Then came the bugs.
Phylloxera vastatrix
, they were called. They were a mystery because no one knew where they’d come from or how to get rid of them. The bugs were tiny, almost impossible to see with the naked eye. They were everywhere in the vines. Eating the vines. Killing them. They caused pimples on the leaves and chewed the wood. Vignerons had tried all sorts of things to save the vines, to kill the phylloxera, but nothing worked. Some vignerons even flooded vineyards to drown the insects. This seemed to work a bit, but not really.
    Vines kept dying.
    Eventually the bugs came to Romanée-Conti and the vines began to wither. People told his grandfather he should rip out all of them. People told him he had no choice. Monsieur Leroyagreed. At first Aubert’s grandfather refused. The vines were more than 350 years old, he said. They were history, he said. If Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet could resist cholera, his vines could endure bugs.
    Following much discussion, in 1945, when Aubert was six years old, Edmond, the man Aubert was coming to know as his father, and Monsieur Clin gathered with some hired hands in Romanée-Conti. Coquette was harnessed, and the men and gentle beast set about tearing out the vines of Romanée-Conti.
    Freshly removed, the bug-infested vines were piled in a twisted frenzy, the long, stringy roots sticking out every which way, as if the
enfants
were trying to cling to something, to someone as they were dragged into a burn pile on the edge of the vineyard.
    Little Aubert heard that while the work was being done, as the
enfants
snapped and cracked in the fire, as the smoke from the burning vinestocks curled to the sky, people came from the village of Vosne, people came from all over Burgundy, and watched and wept. Little Aubert was told that Edmond wept.

    Aubert and his grandfather came to end of the dirt road, where it formed a T with another dirt road that squiggled north and south through the vines. The only sign at the crossroads was the cross.
    To the north were the Domaine’s vines in the top-growth vineyards of Richebourg, Grands Échézeaux, and Échézeaux, and beyond those more top-growth vineyards, and then beyond those, little Aubert could see, the roof of the magnificent castle structure of Clos de Vougeot, the ancient home and winery for the monks who first cultivated the Côte d’Or, and where, for a time, before Duvault-Blochet, the grapes of Romanée-Conti werevinified. The Clos was in need of repair, having been damaged by the bombs from the sky. Beyond the Clos was the village of Chambolle-Musigny.
    To the south were the vineyards of La Grande Rue, and two more Domaine holdings: La Tâche and Les Gaudichots, then still more vines off in the distance spilled around the town of Nuits-Sts.-Georges, and the restaurant where Edmond and Aubert would sometimes have lunch. It was called La Croix Blanche, which Edmond chose to believe was named after the white stone cross of the Romanée-Conti vineyard. In Nuits there were also the chocolate shops and bakeries Little Aubert liked.
    Immediately behind