A group of men pulled off an astounding wine heist last weekend, stealing 30,000 bottles from a warehouse in Cortona in the Tuscany region of Italy. The wine’s owner estimates that the thieved vino was worth $5.5 million.
While booze is regularly nicked from restaurants and wine shops, Lorenzo Vivoli, who works in communications for Marchesi Antinori, the winemaker that was robbed, said he was not aware of any theft this big directly from a warehouse or winery.
The thieves struck on the evening of Oct. 2. Security video showed that it was a large operation, involving seven or eight masked men who loaded the wine into two trucks, with two more men as drivers. The job took about three hours, Mr. Vivoli said.
While no arrests have been made, there are some suspicions.
The warehouse alarm system did not go off, leading Mr. Vivoli to suspect the involvement of “someone from the inside” who might have deactivated it.
Moreover, the red wines taken were Guado al Tasso, Solaia and Tignanello, some of Marchesi Antinori’s most prestigious and sought-after varieties. Marchesi Antinori is one of Italy’s most venerable wineries, its history dating to the 14th century. It lies in Tuscany, the country’s second-largest wine-exporting region, and perhaps its most famous.
On the Friday evening the wine was stolen, the bottles were sitting in the warehouse, ready to be shipped for export on Monday morning. Those shipments happen only once or twice a year.
“They got the perfect timing,” Mr. Vivoli said. “It’s almost like they knew.”
While the wine bottles have a small label to authenticate them and discourage counterfeiting, the shipment did not have any tracking system built in.
And while the winery had insurance, it was intended to cover smaller-scale thefts. “We weren’t prepared for something like this,” Mr. Vivoli said. “We do have insurance, but unfortunately it will only pay us one-tenth of the price.”
The police in Cortona are investigating. “They are very confident they can go forward in a good way,” Mr. Vivoli said of the police. “30,000 bottles do not disappear.”
Indeed, while the thieves succeeded in their brazen heist, unloading so many bottles may well prove more difficult.
For one thing, the bottles they stole are not random hooch. “These wines are produced in limited quantities that are very sought after,” Mr. Vivoli said. “They are only tiny quantities sent to each restaurant or wine store.”
Marchesi Antinori’s executives hope that its discriminating customers could aid the investigation.
“We are cooperating closely with the authorities and informing our partners and customers around the world, asking them to pay particular attention to any offers outside official distribution channels,” said Renzo Cotarella, the company’s chief executive.
But perhaps the thieves aren’t looking to sell. Could they simply be passionate oenophiles who plan to drink the 30,000 bottles of Tuscan red themselves?
Mr. Vivoli responded with a laugh: “You’d need a lot of thieves.”
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