The biggest winery robbery – 30,000 bottles of wine stolen in Italy
Kyiv • UNN
30,000 bottles of wines from the 2023 vintage were taken from the Marchesi Antinori warehouse. Police suspect a professional criminal group.
In Tuscany, unknown perpetrators robbed the wine warehouse of the famous family company Marchesi Antinori, which has been operating since 1385. The criminals took around 30,000 bottles worth approximately €5 million in total. Italian media are calling it the largest wine theft in the country’s history, UNN reports, citing Bild.
Details
According to investigators, at least seven masked people broke into the warehouse in the city of Cortona last Saturday. They disabled the alarm system and surveillance cameras, then used the company’s forklifts to load wine onto two trucks. The theft was discovered only on Monday morning, when employees arrived at work.
The stolen wine included Solaia, Tignanello, and Guado al Tasso. All the bottles were from the 2023 vintage. In particular, the criminals took around 10,000 bottles of Solaia—one of Tuscany’s best-known and most expensive wines. Depending on the brand, one bottle costs approximately €120–300, while rare examples can be considerably more expensive.
Company head Renzo Cotarella believes that a professional criminal group may have been behind the robbery and could be linked to similar thefts at other wineries. He hopes the shipment can be found: two trucks carrying such a quantity of wine would be difficult to sell unnoticed.