Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

by Donald Kladstrup

  Soon, however, it was the audience that was whispering, then chuckling out loud. The cork refused to budge. He tried again. Nothing happened. Realizing there was no alternative, he pinned the bottle between his knees, gripped its neck with his left hand and pulled with all his might. The pop sounded like a gunshot. Had there been anything in the bottle, towels would have had to be distributed to the audience. Sheepishly, the speaker said, “Well, you get the idea.”

  Laughter and applause increased when the theater group took over and began performing skits depicting life in the vineyards. The skits had them laughing so hard that German guards came to see what was going on. Fortunately, the guards did not speak enough French to understand the slang and country patois the vignerons were using, because the sketches were often rude and made fun of the Germans. Most of the time, the guards just shook their heads and walked away.

  The real star of the evening, the wine, came out at intermission, but not before a few introductory remarks and paeans to wine.

  “It is French to smile and sing,” one speaker said.

  Another told the audience, “Many of you do not come from wine areas, so tonight we want to introduce you to all the beauty and purity of wine.” He then began to rhapsodize about France’s different wine regions. “We take pride in each of them,” he said. “Tonight we travel with Rabelais to the banks of the Loire, we visit the chais of Bordeaux and Cognac, we will bask in the luminous waves of light that flood the hills of the Languedoc and Roussillon, and the blue sky of Provence, we will savor the pleasures of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Tastevins, we will walk through Champagne, the country of Dom Pérignon, and over the hills of Jurançon. We shall go as far even as Suresnes, which should not be forgotten in any wine tour.”

  Gaston Huet, however, had not forgotten what everyone was waiting for and pushed to the front of the stage. “Enough,” he said. “To talk about wine, that is a wonderful thing, but drinking it, that is much better.”

  With those words, which were nearly drowned out by cheers, tables were set up and bottles of wine were carried out, one bottle to be shared among seven men. The men had to bring their own glasses, most of which were small glasses that had contained mustard sent from home.

  Huet urged the men to quickly find their respective groups, the ones to which they had been assigned according to the wines they had chosen. “We have tried to do this correctly,” Huet said. “The wines that should be chilled were left outside. Those that should be served at room temperature were brought inside a couple of hours ago.”

  With so little wine, however, Huet encouraged the men not to hurry. “Take your time to appreciate what is in front of you,” he said. “Admire it before you bring it to your lips, this mustard glass now filled with nectar, and take the time to remember that tonight our goal is to do nothing but glorify one of our greatest treasures.”

  For a moment, it was almost as if the POWs were in a cathedral. The silence was that deep, even reverent.

  And then a spontaneous cheer went up. “I don’t know when I have ever felt so moved,” Huet said.

  Once everyone had been served and gaiety was in full swing, the priest and his choir took over, leading the POWs in rousing drinking songs and a few melancholy airs of France.

  Huet retreated to a corner of the room to savor his little mustard glass of wine. He sighed with satisfaction. It was a dry white wine from the Loire Valley, not one from his vineyard, but a taste of home nonetheless. He looked deep into its greenish-golden color, then paused to breathe in its aromas, its flowery bouquet with hints of lemon, pear, apple and honey.

  As he brought the glass to his lips, the winemaker in Huet took over. “Hmmm, a bit acidic,” he thought. “Green on the middle palate and the finish is weak. I doubt the Chenin Blanc grapes fully ripened.”

  Such analysis lasted only a few brief seconds, however, as the wine lover in Huet suddenly emerged and the flavors and aromas of the wine enveloped him.

  Years later, Huet would recall that moment, and all the work that went into planning and organizing the affair. “It saved our sanity,” he said. “I don’t know what we would have done without that party. It gave us something to hold on to. It gave us a reason to get up in the morning, to get through each day. Talking about wine and sharing it made all of us feel closer to home, and more alive.”

  Huet did not remember precisely what wine he drank or the vintage. “It was nothing special and there was only a thimbleful,” he said, “but it was glorious, and the best wine I ever drank.”

  “The best wine I ever drank? Hmm. Let me think about that.”

  Roger Ribaud was stretched out on his bunk at Oflag XVII A, a German POW camp near Edelbach, in lower Austria. It was Christmas Day 1940, and all he and his fellow POWs could think about was home and everything they were missing.

  “We had a marvelous Burgundy last Christmas with the turkey,” he said to his friend, who was sitting on the end of the bunk. “It was a ’37 Echézeaux, light in color but very rich. But the best I have ever had? No, I don’t think so. There was a . . .” And on the conversation went as the men thought about wines they had drunk and the occasions on which they had drunk them.

  “That’s the thing,” Ribaud said. “It all depends on who and what you drink them with. Haven’t you ever had a cheap little rosé with a special girl and thought, ‘This is great!’ ”

  After his friend had left, Ribaud continued lying in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and thinking. It was his first Christmas away from home and the loneliness was almost unbearable.

  Dreaming, however, was not enough to get him through that bleak winter day, so he reached into his bag, took out a pencil.

  On this Noël of 1940, I have begun to write a little book in an effort to dispel some of the sadness that we are living with and share some of the hopes we still cling to in our captivity, of returning to our homes and loved ones and the values we hold most dear.

  Ribaud began to make a list of French wines, every wine he could think of: some he had tasted, others he hoped to taste. He sorted them by region: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Alsace, the Loire. He classified them according to their finesse, body and bouquet.

  By then, his friend was back and peering over his shoulder. He was impressed but told Ribaud he had made a few mistakes. You’re wrong about the Nuits-Saint-Georges, he said. It’s much more full-bodied.

  Their ardent discussion soon drew the attention of several other prisoners from Barracks IV, among them the Marquis Bertrand de Lur-Saluces, owner of the famed Château d’Yquem. All were fascinated with what Ribaud was writing.

  As snow continued to fall and the wind of those cold winter days whistled through the cracks of their barracks wall, the men gathered more and more frequently around the rough wooden table where Ribaud was writing. With no books or any other reference material, the discussions sometimes became heated.

  “I want this book to be for everyone,” Ribaud told the others, “not just for rich people. I want to be able to show that with all the wonderful things our France produces, everyone can live well and have a decent wine cellar. This is the responsibility of the maître de maison.”

  What began to take shape, as Ribaud continued writing, was a kind of gastronomic guidebook in which Ribaud, a lawyer by training, noted the food he had eaten with various wines and whether he thought the combinations worked.

  In the same breath, however, he worried about what the Germans were doing, and feared that many of the greatest wines would be seized and “prematurely sacrificed”—that is, consumed before they were ready to be drunk. He could easily imagine a group of young soldiers washing down a plate of sauerkraut and sausage with a rich velvety Margaux. The thought made him shudder.

  I hope, dear reader, for your own satisfaction and that of your friends and family, that when this war finally ends, you will still find that the most venerable bottles you have hidden from the Germans are still safe, that they will have escaped the torment of these years and be
ready to fête their resurrection.

  Now, more than ever, Ribaud was convinced that the book he was writing was important.

  He called it Le Maître de Maison de Sa Cave à Sa Table (The Head of the Household from His Cellar to His Table). “This is a memoir of great food and wine and how they can be brought into perfect harmony,” he wrote in the introduction.

  Suddenly, the long cold lonely days seemed shorter. Ribaud saved every scrap of paper he could find, including the wrapping paper on packages from home, so that he would have something to write on. And every spare minute, that is what he did, work on his book. He asked other POWs about their favorite wine-and-food combinations, what grapes grew best in their region and how they prepared certain foods.

  Over time, he compiled a huge core of information and knowledge, not only about the more famous wines but about small country ones that were barely known outside their villages. There was Crépy, a white semi-sparkling wine from the Haute-Savoie on the French side of Lake Geneva, Vic-sur-Seille, a vin gris from the Lorraine, and Irouléguy, a wine that can be either red, white or rosé and comes from the slopes of the Pyrenees. The Crépy, Ribaud said, is wonderful with cooked shellfish and very spicy dishes. The light, pleasant fruitiness of the Vic-sur-Seille, he said, makes it a wonderful match for a tourte-chaude, a crusty, creamy potpie filled with ham and cheese. Irouléguy, on the other hand, is more suited to anchovies and sardines, oily salty foods of the Basque country.

  Ribaud stressed that one did not have to be an expert to know these things, that most of this could be learned by reading, tasting and talking to others. Nor was it necessary to have a wine cellar that was stocked with every wine in the world. Better, he said, to have a cave with wines you like and which fit your budget. To help in this process, Ribaud drew up a chart for matching wine and food.

  “The choice of wine is specific to what you want it to do,” he explained. “It can bring out the characteristics of each dish, or it can establish the importance you want to give each dish.”

  For an hors d’oeuvre such as aspics de foie gras, Ribaud suggested a Brut champagne, a white Hermitage or a white wine from Corsica or Provence. Oysters, on the other hand, called for a white Graves from Bordeaux. However, if that was not in your cave, try a Vouvray, a Pouilly-Fuissé or a Cérons.

  Ribaud cautioned that regional characteristics should be carefully considered. A foie gras from Périgord should be accompanied by a sweet white Sauternes because the goose, fed primarily on cornmeal noodles and mush, is larger and fattier. The smaller Strasbourg goose, fed on wheat noodles, produces a foie gras with less fat and therefore should be accompanied by a hearty red Pommard.

  Ribaud realized that because of the food shortage in France, nothing was going to be wasted, and he had ideas for wines to go with every conceivable dish. For the hungry Bordelais who had been trapping pigeons in the city square, he recommended a Moulis, a Margaux or a wine from Château Beychevelle.

  For those who bartered wine for something to eat, pork chops from a freshly slaughtered pig, for instance, Ribaud suggested a Santenay or some other light red from Burgundy.

  For breaded pigs’ ears, he proposed a woody, straw-flavored Arbois or an inky black wine from Cahors. For pigs’ tails, it was a Joigny, a minor red wine from northern Burgundy, or Bouzy, a still red wine from Champagne. Pigs’ feet, or pigs’ trotters, required an unfinished champagne or a robust white from Algeria.

  Brains, Ribaud said, require serious thought. Much depends on how they are prepared. Served in a browned butter sauce, he suggested a glorious Montrachet or white Mercurey, wines that would enhance but not overpower the delicate, if unusual, flavor of the cervelle. But if the brains were deep-fried, a more rustic wine such as a Viré or a white Mâcon would be more appropriate.

  Ribaud’s book covered everything from the first course to dessert. He described what to drink with grapefruit (a Condrieu), stuffed cabbage (Chassagne-Montrachet) and stuffed carp (Chablis or Cassis).

  For frogs, Ribaud would have served a Saumur from the Loire Valley or a Sylvaner from Alsace. Snails would go well with a cold Chablis or a white Hermitage, even a white from Algeria.

  What was essential to remember, he said, was that wine can bring a special quality to any meal, whether it is highlighted by a great rack of lamb (a Pauillac or Saint-Estèphe) or a croque-monsieur, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (a Chinon or Auxey-Duresses).

  “It is an art to choose the best moment to savor the great wines and select the dishes that will artistically blend the aromas and flavors of the wine and food,” he wrote.

  The wines Ribaud chose during his prison days could only be savored in his imagination, but they nevertheless provided comfort. “They were like a tree we could hang on to,” he said. “A tree whose roots were deeply anchored in the soil of our country and whose branches spread throughout the world.”

  After the war, his book was published to great acclaim and hailed as one of the first books that paid serious attention to regional wines and food.

  Roger Ribaud sent a copy to each of his fellow prisoners of war. “I hope this will help erase the pain of our imprisonment and yet be a souvenir of friendship and the years that we shared together.”

  * * *

  EIGHT

  Saving the Treasure

  CHAMPAGNE CACHE IN FOXHOLE

  With the American Third Army, West of Bastogne, Belgium, Jan. 8 (AP) — Lieut. William T. McClelland of 318 Forest Avenue, Ben Avon, Pa., may dig plenty of foxholes in this combat area, but it is doubtful whether he will maintain the standard set by his first. While excavating for his first combat-zone home, he uncovered a cache of 400 bottle [sic] of champagne and other wines.

  —The New York Times, Jan. 9, 1945

  The treasure was everywhere: in wine cellars, warehouses, ports, as well as on trains and airplanes. Some of it was even buried in the ground.

  But when Allied leaders, in 1943, began laying plans for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe, treasure was the last thing on their minds. Their goal was to defeat Hitler and bring the Third Reich to its knees.

  Nevertheless, saving the treasure, “France’s most precious jewel” as one French leader described it, became a prime objective.

  It had rained heavily most of the night. Although fields were muddy and skies still threatened, Jean-Michel Chevreau was eager to start work. His vines had just begun to flower and he wanted to see how they had withstood the storm.

  Pulling on a sweater, the Loire Valley winemaker glanced out the window and suddenly stopped. To his amazement, not a single German soldier was in sight. Troops who had been there the day before and had occupied his village for four years had completely vanished, almost as if they had never been there.

  The reason quickly became clear. It was D-Day, June 6, 1944. The long-awaited invasion of Europe was underway. Hitler and his generals were desperately pulling troops from the Loire Valley and other parts of France and rushing them to Normandy.

  For Georges Hugel, the landings did not come as a total surprise. On that late spring day, he was at home in Alsace recuperating from wounds received on the Russian front. He had set up three radios within arm’s reach of his bed, one of them tuned to Radio Berlin, another to Radio Vichy and one to the BBC in London. Georges kept switching among them; he sensed something was going on.

  For several days, Radio London had been increasing the number of cryptic messages it broadcast, such as “The apple trees are blooming,” “Jean, put on your hat,” and “The speckled cat has meowed three times.” On June 5, 1944, there were eight hours of these “action messages.”

  The next day, the pain in Georges’s feet woke him very early. He automatically reached across and turned on the radios, one after another, rotating the dials for the best reception. Something about the urgency in the BBC broadcast caught his ear, and Georges turned it up.

  “This morning at six-thirty, the combined forces . . .”

 
Georges fell back in his bed. “It’s about time,” he thought.

  It was the largest sea and air offensive ever mounted. Five Allied divisions, 7,000 ships and landing craft along with 24,000 American and British paratroopers were involved. The paratroopers arrived first, just after midnight, and took up positions on the flanks of the invasion beaches. Six hours later, the main assault force landed on beaches code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. As ships and landing craft bombarded German positions, thousands of troops swept ashore.

  All day long, Georges was glued to his radios, checking one and then another for the latest news. He listened as Charles de Gaulle addressed the people of France: “The supreme battle has begun! After so many battles, so much fury, so much sorrow, the time is here for the decisive confrontation that has been awaited for so long.”