Exclusive: The alarms in wine’s biggest heist were switched off from inside before masked thieves took off with 30,000 bottles worth over $8 million

Masked individuals spent around three hours on a Saturday night to dismantle security measures at Marchesi Antinori’s warehouse in Cortona, Tuscany, allowing them to steal approximately 30,000 bottles of high-value wine. The security system had been disabled from inside the building the previous day, according to Lorenzo Vivoli, who works in Antinori’s communications office.

The heist occurred as the bottles were already packed and prepared for shipment to Antinori’s export markets. Lorenzo Vivoli described it as "the biggest theft in the history of wine," with Renzo Cotarella, Antinori CEO, calling it "an unprecedented scale theft in the wine industry in Italy." The stolen bottles included Tignanello, Solaia, and Guado al Tasso, all from the 2023 vintage, with the thieves taking roughly 10,000 bottles each.

The stolen wine is estimated to be worth around $8.2 million based on U.S. retail prices, while in Europe, it amounts to approximately €5 million. This would make it the most valuable single wine or spirits theft on record, surpassing the previous Italian record of €750,000 from a 2017 theft in Cervia. The police are investigating the incident, but no suspects have been identified yet.

Antinori has surveillance footage but has refrained from releasing it to the authorities while the investigation is ongoing.