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

The story of the French resistance to protect the wine is a very interesting one, well told by the authors of this book. It is clear that the amount of research involved is extraordinary, and the authors do a good job of transmitting to the reader the deep feelings and history involved.

One major comment is that the whole sotry is mainly focused on WWII, making the title "WINE AND WAR" somewhat misleading. As a piece of history, this is not very additive to the history of WWII. The French Resistance has its history well documented, and this is only a portion of its activities. There is some lack of connection between the individual stories and the actual political and military developments of the war, making the stories interesting but disconnected.

Overall, this is a great book if you are a wine enthusiast or if you want somehting to read over a 10 hour flight, but if you are a pure historian, look elsewhere.

If you want a good World War II history, then this is not the book for you. In fact, if you don't love wine, you won't find this book to be all that interesting at all. In the larger context of history, one could charitably call this a history of one of the many dimensions of the German occupation of France & the French resistance.

It is a fascinating portrayl of the wine-making industry & its subculture, and is an intriguing example of how far some people were willing to go to protect, in the final analysis, a bunch bottles of fermented grape juice. The french & the germans involved in this story are patriots, collaborators & sympathetic occupiers. There stories can be found by the thousands outside of the world of wine. The only distinction is that the french attach such importance to their wines, which give them a sense of their national identity.

As befits a largely insubstantial topic, the book is a quick and easy read. The authors are not trying to impart some Great Message, but are simply trying to tell a pretty interesting tale. It is enjoyable enough to merit 4 stars, but would need more substance for a 5th star.

The quotations from the protagonists and their progeny tell the story. Good thing, too, because the authors' writing style is at best pedestrian. Several times I threw the book across the room because I became so frustrated at the lack of quality in the narrative. The text reads like a biography that a fourth-grade student might bring home, which is very distracting from the story itself. That said, the colorful anecdotes that appear between quotation marks still merit reading the book. After all, I did each time walk across the room and pick up the book to resume reading. Just don't get your hopes up too high.

If you have ever visited any of the wine region(s) of France, you will find this book incredible. I have visited them all and now I want to go back and see the Chateaus, caves and fields from a totally different view - not so much how they make or store their wine - but see where all these (never before known to me) things happened. I want to see the bullet holes in the walls, the boarded up tunnels where people hid, the lake where they hid the wine and the city streets were a lot of bad things happened. And, if you have not been to France, just your knowledge of the wine you like will shed a brand new appreciation on the winemakers, their history and how they survived to make this for you to now drink and enjoy. This is a must read for anyone who has any appreciation of wine.

This is a wonderful book. I purchased it as a wine lover but finished it being far more interested in French history than I had previously been. This is a book much more about the French people during the brief period from the late 1930s to the end of WWII than about wine itself. It is a book that illustrates a history I had previously ignored.

The story follows several wine families from the major wine regions: Bordeaux, Champagne, the Rhone, and Burgundy. The book also looks closely at the Germans who were ultimately placed in charge of these area's vinyards. It is the relationship between the growers and the German wine chiefs that makes for the most interesting part of the book.

My only criticism would be that the book could have been longer, with more stories and detail.