It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold, a 1787 Chateau Lafite supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. After heated bidding, the Forbes family paid $156,000 for it at a 1985 Christie's auction in London. But was the wine for real?

Benjamin Wallace attempts to unravel that long-running mystery in his page-turner ``The Billionaire's Vinegar,'' a tale of alleged wine fakes, big egos and high-profile lawsuits.

Let's start with key player Hardy Rodenstock, whom Wallace portrays as a charming and secretive German pop-band manager and wine lover turned wine merchant. Rodenstock wowed collectors, critics and auctioneers with invitations to his mega-tastings (one featured 125 vintages of Chateau d'Yquem) and his surprising knack for unearthing rare old wines.

The 1787 Lafite was part of a cache of 200-year-old bottles that Rodenstock acquired in 1985 -- discovered, he said, hidden in a bricked-up Paris cellar. He has always refused to reveal the address where they were found. He announced that the bottles, engraved with the initials ``Th.J,'' were long-lost wines of Thomas Jefferson's.

The best parts of ``The Billionaire's Vinegar'' track the furious efforts by various players to determine whether the wines were really Jefferson's or very clever fakes.

A skeptical Jefferson scholar questioned the bottles' connection to the third president even before the 1787 Lafite went on the block and then was flown to New York from London strapped to a mattress on the Forbes corporate jet.

Enter Koch

Most recently, Florida billionaire William Koch, suspicious about the ``Jefferson'' bottles in his vast collection, underwrote ex-FBI and Scotland Yard investigators who chased around the world consulting scientists and delved into Rodenstock's past. One test aimed at detecting the wines' true age involved placing bottles in a nuclear physicist's ``germanium detector'' in Europe's deepest subterranean laboratory.

Convinced the German had faked the bottles, Koch started filing legal complaints alleging fraud -- against Rodenstock, auction houses, a collector, a retailer and an importer.

Much has been reported already about counterfeit wines, Koch's litigation and Rodenstock's denials. In a faxed reply to queries last week, Rodenstock attacked the book's credibility, insisting that ``Wallace had been bought by Koch.'' Although he said he hadn't read the book, Rodenstock dismissed it as ``Marchenbuch'' (a fairy tale).

Blasted Bottles

What makes Wallace's book worth reading is the way he fleshes out the tale with entertaining digressions into Jefferson's wine adventures, how to fake wines (who knew a shotgun blast could make a bottle look old?) and dead-on portraits of several major wine personalities who intersected unhappily with the wines.

Too bad Wallace never actually met or spoke to Rodenstock (they dealt only by fax), as he never fully captures the German's elusive character and motivations.

Mercifully, Wallace is not a nose-to-the-glass wine writer spewing detailed descriptions of every rare bottle mentioned, though I did begin to wonder if he had ever tasted any old wines himself and really understood their appeal.

Alas, the book has an abrupt, unsatisfying finish. Wallace doesn't explore anti-counterfeit measures that top wineries around the world are now using. And while he lays out a good case that the Jefferson bottles are fake, he can't give a definitive answer about Rodenstock's role: Koch's court case against him is still unresolved.

Another Lawsuit

The latest development didn't make it into the book. Koch, who now apparently sees himself as a white knight fighting wine fraud in general, unleashed yet another lawsuit on April 23, this time against New York auction house Acker Merrall & Condit.

The shadow hung over Acker's auction at Cru restaurant two days later, though it didn't dampen bids. Yet halfway through the evening, 22 lots of Domaine Ponsot Burgundies were pulled from the sale. Proprietor Laurent Ponsot, who was there, had questioned their authenticity after receiving an e-mail with photos of some of the bottles from a collector planning to bid. Ponsot didn't think they were genuine and warranted ``further investigation.''

``The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine'' is published by Crown (319 pages, $24.95).

Auction Results

Every New York auction weekend, I wonder whether wine prices will crack. Not yet. Three strong sales on April 25 and 26 were a window onto today's market. They totaled $13 million, with 97 percent to 100 percent sold.

A Christie's auction of first growths, vintages 1982 to 2000, showed the strength of investment-grade Bordeaux. A 1982 Lafite brought $36,000; off-vintages went for double and triple their estimates; big formats sold high. The top 10 bottles, all Petrus, were snapped up by Europeans and Asians with strong currencies.

At Zachys, Graham Lyons's pristine collection pulled in ludicrously big bucks for rare old Burgundies. In this day of worry about fakes, impeccable provenance counts. Two bottles of 1923 Faiveley Musigny went for $49,000, six times the expected top. Dozens of lots exceeded high estimates.

Every bottle in Acker Merrall & Condit's champagne auction sold. The shocker? $84,700 for two bottles of rare 1959 Dom Perignon Rose. Otherwise the top sellers were, to no one's surprise, Romanee-Conti and Rousseau Burgundies.