It took two trucks, at least seven people and the victim's own forklifts. Thieves made off with about 30,000 bottles of premium Tuscan wine from one of Italy's oldest wine families, in what the company calls the largest wine theft in Italian history.
The heist hit a Marchesi Antinori facility near Cortona, in Tuscany's Arezzo province, on a Saturday night, the Associated Press reported. The stolen wine is valued at an estimated €5 million (about $5.8 million).
- ~30,000Bottles stolen
- €5MEstimated valueAbout $5.8 million
- €150–500Retail price per bottle
- 7+Thieves involved
Source: Marchesi Antinori, via the Associated Press
How They Pulled It Off
According to the company, the gang disabled the facility's alarm system and surveillance cameras, then rolled up with two large trucks. They used the winery's forklifts to load the wine and drove off into the night.
Every bottle taken was from the 2023 vintage. The haul included about 10,000 bottles of Solaia, one of Antinori's flagship wines, along with Tignanello and Guado al Tasso, labels that retail for roughly €150 to €500 a bottle.
The theft was discovered on Monday, but Antinori waited until Friday, Oct. 9, to go public so it wouldn't interfere with the investigation.
"A Very Well-Prepared Gang"
CEO Renzo Cotarella described the thieves as a well-prepared crew and said they may be the same group behind recent break-ins at other Italian wineries. Police and the Carabinieri are reviewing footage and looking into how the wine might be resold.
Cotarella said he is confident the wine can be traced, since two truckloads of high-end bottles would be hard to move without drawing attention. In the meantime, Antinori is warning customers around the world to be wary of offers for its wines that come from outside official sales channels.
Smashing the Old Record
The previous benchmark for an Italian wine theft was set in 2017, when thieves took about 2,000 bottles of rare wine worth €750,000 from a warehouse near the Adriatic resort town of Cervia. This haul is roughly 15 times larger by bottle count.
Marchesi Antinori was founded in 1385, and the Antinori family has run it for 26 generations.