When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, one of Hitler’s first priorities was plundering its wine.
The Reich appointed official wine buyers — called Weinführers — to commandeer French vineyards and ship their finest bottles to Germany.
The winemakers fought back the only way they could.
They bricked up secret cellars behind fake walls. They mislabeled ordinary bottles as grand cru and shipped the good wine to neutral countries. They flooded some cellars to destroy access.
At Champagne house Pol Roger — a personal favorite of Winston Churchill — workers deliberately directed German buyers to inferior stock for four years.
At Château Mouton Rothschild, the family buried their rarest bottles in undisclosed locations before fleeing.
Most were recovered after liberation.
Some were never found.
Across France, thousands of bottles of the world’s greatest wine outlasted the Nazi occupation — hidden, bricked up, and waiting.
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The story, which is probably apocryphal, is that American armoured cavalry and the French resistance were entering the most celebrated French wine country in August 1944, sweeping up stray Germans and driving hard. Suddenly, the French halted and got cautious, there were Germans in digging in and preparing to resist. The Americans couldn't understand but a Resistance leader told them "Some of the vineyards down there are the most famous ones in France… we will never be forgiven if they are damaged." Some members of the Resistance crept forward on reconnaissance, came back and reported "It's all right, they are only in the inferior vineyards! We can attack!".