Thieves steal 30,000 wine bottles worth €5m in Italy, reports say
The heist at the Florence-based winery is believed to be one of the largest thefts of its kind in Italy.
Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine, worth a combined €5m (£4.2m), from a renowned Italian winery, according to reports in Italian media.
Marchesi Antinori, one of Italy’s largest family-run wineries, said the theft at its storage site in Tuscany happened on Saturday while the company was getting ready to send a shipment to customers overseas.
At least seven masked men are thought to have switched off the alarms, disabled the cameras and used company forklifts to load two large trucks with the firm’s prized Tuscan reds, Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso.
Chief executive Renzo Cotarella told Corriere della Sera that it was the biggest theft of its kind in Italy.
“A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy,” he said.
He added that he hoped the authorities would be able to track down the stolen wine.
“Two trucks full of merchandise can’t just disappear into thin air. The Tuscan roads are full of cameras; perhaps with a bit of luck we’ll be able to recover at least some of the bottles stolen from us.”
He told the Financial Times: “These wines have a great value and I don’t know how they can sell all this wine around the world without being seen.”
The company believes the choice of bottles, which normally sell for between €150 and €500 each, indicates the thieves were wine experts and had insider knowledge.
The theft was not discovered until Monday morning, when staff arrived at the site. No arrests have been made.
Marchesi Antinori was established in 1385 and exports to 170 countries. It recorded revenue of €263m (£223m) last year.
Italy has seen a wave of wine thefts this year, including two in the northern Piedmont region, where bottles worth hundreds of thousands of euros were reportedly stolen.