30,000 bottles of wine worth about five million euros stolen in Italy

Thieves stole 30,000 bottles of wine, with a total value of about five million euros, from the warehouse of the Marchesi Antinori winery in Tuscany, the company announced.

The company stated that at least seven masked men deactivated the alarm systems, disabled the cameras, and used forklifts to load the bottles into two large trucks while the winery was preparing to ship an order to customers abroad. The theft was only discovered on Monday morning, when employees arrived at the location; no one has been arrested.

CEO Renzo Cotarella assessed that this is the largest theft of its kind in Italy: “A theft of this scale and value has certainly never happened before in Italy.” The company expressed hope that the authorities would manage to recover some of the stolen bottles: “Two trucks full of goods cannot simply vanish into thin air. Tuscan roads are full of cameras – maybe, with a bit of luck, we will manage to recover at least some of the bottles that were stolen from us.”

Antinori believes that the selection of bottles, which are usually sold at prices ranging from 150 to 500 euros each, indicates that the thieves were wine connoisseurs and had inside information. The winery, founded in 1385, exports to 170 countries; last year it generated revenue of 263 million euros.