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Vinegar Gets Optioned Before Being Published

The Billionaire’s Vinegar, by Benjamin WallaceAccording to Variety, Will Smith is among a group of producers who have optioned The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, an upcoming book by Benjamin Wallace. There were no reports on when production might begin.

The story centers on an auctioned cache of wine bottles and the scandal that follows. In 1985, a member of the Forbes family purchased a bottle of Bordeaux for $156,000 at auction. The bottle was believed to have been part of a cache that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. After paying half a million for the other bottles, billionaire Bill Koch paid an additional million to confirm their authenticity. The wines turned out to be bogus, and Koch sued Hardy Rodenstock, who had supposedly unearthed the bottles and sold them at auction.