I'm starting to get to the point with Matthew McConaughey where I just blindly trust his judgement and will go see any project he's a part of, because dude is on a pretty serious hot streak right now. All he seems to be making lately is good decisions, and the newest role he's been cast in doesn't seem to be any different: According to reports, Matthew McConaughey will star in The Billionaire's Vinegar , which is about the real life story of an extremely expensive bottle of wine. Seriously. But trust me — it sounds amazing.
The film is currently in development, but will be based on the extremely successful, nonfiction book of the same name by Benjamin Wallace, who attempts to determine the provenance of a bottle of vintage wine — specifically a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux — purportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson. The bottle was auctioned at Christie's, and went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family, but many doubt that the bottle was ever even in Jefferson's possession.
More bottles from the same cache, supposedly from Jefferson's wine cellar and discovered in France, were purchased by Bill Koch for $500,000. And after dropping a cool half-million on the wine itself, he then turned right around and spent double that investigating their origins — and ultimately learned enough that he sued Hardy Rodenstock, the music-manager-turned-wine-salesman who'd provided it to him, claiming fraud. A judgement was entered against Rodenstock in 2010, but if I told you more, you'd be in for some major spoilers.
Regardless, all this for a bottle of wine whose contents will never actually be drunk by its owners, thus the name: Billionaire's Vinegar.
I don't know about you, but even after that brief description, I want to run out and buy the book right now — not only to get to the bottom of this story, but also to speculate on which role McConaughey might be playing.
Either way, this is very exciting casting news, particularly for producers, who have been trying to get this movie made since 2008, when they first purchased the rights to Wallace's book. (Before it was even published — just to show you how much they were champing at the bit.) And I can't really blame them, given my own level of excitement to see the finished product. Can't wait!
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