McConaughey to star in Billionaire’s Vinegar

Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey is to star in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a film based on a book of the same name which details one of the world’s most infamous wine frauds.

Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers’ Club

Brad Pitt was previously lined up to play the lead however McConaughey, who won an Oscar last year for his performance in the Dallas Buyers’ Club as an AIDS patients in the 1980s, has today been slated to play the lead. 

Based on Benjamin Wallace’s book of the same name, the film will detail how wine collectors were duped into believing they were buying bottles of wine that had once belonged to US president Thomas Jefferson back in the 1980s.

Also known as The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux with the initials ThJ etched in the glass, allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson, was bought for $156,000 at auction in 1985 by publisher Malcolm Forbes. In 1987, US billionaire Bill Koch bought four bottles of 1787 Château Lafite engraved “Th.J” from German wine dealer Hardy Rodenstock for around US$500,000.

The subject of various court cases, debate over the bottles’ authenticity became the basis of bestselling book The Billionaire’s Vinegar, by Benjamin Wallace and led to a sustained crusade against various wine frauds by Koch which still rumble on to this day.

The rights to the film were sold in 2008, before the books was published, to Sony. Escape Artists and Overbrook Entertainment have been developing the project for several years, with A-lister Will Smith set to produce the film.