Never mind that The Vintage Caper is light on caper (spoiler alert: freelance insurance investigator Sam Levitt steals back $2.3 million worth of stolen wine), completely lacks suspense (no one stops him), and except for the fingerprints on the bottles, neither the crime, nor its motive, is ever verified (Can you tell I'm rereading Sherlock Holmes, the master of the scientific investigation?). Because that's not why I read Mayle. Over the rainy Thanksgiving weekend in Bar Harbor, I rushed through the copy left behind by my oenophile uncle, before my stepfather could get his hands on it! Why? For the well-researched, humorous travelogue style Mayle trademarked in his breakout memoir of 1989: A Year in Provence — cheeky insidery descriptions of all pleasures French: wine, food, quirky characters, and glorious locales, preferably in Provence.
Being a white wine drinker, Mayle's wine details were lost on me. But any red wine lover, or curious oenophile, should be spellbound by Sam's visits to several of the great Bordeaux châteaux in search of clues to the stolen bottles from the great vintages of premier cru ("first growth") claret (red blends) ('53 Lafite Rothschild, '61 Latour, '83 Margaux, '82 Figeac, '70 Petrus).
What I will remember from this book is the explanation of the initials BCBG, used to describe Sophie Costes, Sam's French contact from the insurance company. For years, I've seen the fashion label on shoes and clothes, but never known that it meant "bon chic, bon genre," or "good style, good attitude." A term that could easily apply to Mayle: the man who wrote about buying $1,300 hand-built shoes in London for GQ (included in "Acquired Tastes," 1993), the man who sparked the American obsession with the south of France, and who was awarded the Legion D'Honneur in 2002 for his efforts to promote France.
p.s. Another Mayle title on my radar, a book he wrote in 1993, after 15 years as a "Mad Man": "Up the Agency, the Funny Business of Advertising."
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