Thieves pull off Italy’s biggest-ever wine heist, stealing 30,000 bottles worth 5 million euros

A sophisticated gang of thieves has pilfered 30,000 bottles of wine, valued at approximately €5 million, from a renowned Italian winery, according to Italian media. The heist occurred at Marchesi Antinori's storage facility in Tuscany on Saturday, as the company was in the process of shipping a consignment of wine to customers abroad.

Seven masked men are suspected of disabling alarms, disabling cameras, and using the company's forklifts to load two large trucks with the stolen wine, which primarily consisted of the winery's prized Tignanello, Solaia, and Guado al Tasso Tuscan reds.

Marchesi Antinori's CEO, Renzo Cotarella, described this theft as the most significant of its kind in Italy's history, stating, "A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy." He expressed optimism that authorities would be able to trace the stolen wine, acknowledging that the vast number of vehicles and cameras on Tuscan roads would likely aid in their recovery.

Cotarella also commented to 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 stolen selection of bottles typically sells for between €150 and €500 each, suggesting the thieves had both the knowledge and connoisseurship to choose the most valuable wines. The crime was not discovered until Monday morning, when staff arrived at the facility. No arrests have been made thus far. Founded in 1385, Marchesi Antinori is one of Italy's largest family-owned wineries, exporting to 170 countries and generating a revenue of €263 million last year.

Recent years have seen a series of wine thefts in Italy, including two in the northern Piedmont region where large sums of money worth of wine were reportedly stolen.