Wine and War is about how French wine makers protected their land, their vines and their wine from the Nazis during World War II. It's fascinating.

When the Germans invaded France, they seized thousands of barrels and cases of wine and sent it immediately to Germany. Many vintners planned ahead and hid their best wines wherever they could -- some buried them, some built false walls, some hid them in grandmother's bed chambers, some used caves, and others used more inventive strategies . The efforts of the owners and waiters of La Tour D'Argent to save the best of their 100,000 bottles are particularly moving.

But the most interesting part of the book, to me, was what happened after the Germans took over. French wineries were required to send set amounts of wine to Germany every month -- even when most all of their workers had been sent to Germany to work in factories. The wineries were also required to supply industrial alcohol for the factories. The strategies used by the wine makers to fill and thwart these demands make for fascinating reading.

However, I do have reservations about recommending this book. As the only book I'm aware of on this topic, it really is interesting and fun to read. However, the Kladstrups are not historians -- they're journalists. And I found my historian training kicking in from time to time as it appeared that they trampled on their sources. There are also some suspiciously thin portions of the narrative, and the Kladstrups do not make clear why this was so.

However, I do recommend the book, in spite of those shortcomings.