Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine worth a total of 5 million euros from one of the largest Italian wineries - Marchesi Antinori. The case is reported by the BBC, News.bg reports.
The robbery took place on October 3 from the company's warehouse in Tuscany, while a shipment was being prepared for export. According to the winery, at least seven masked men managed to disable alarms and surveillance cameras, then used the company's forklifts to load two large trucks with the valuable products.
Among the stolen wines are three of the company's prestigious Tuscan brands - Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso.
The company describes the case as unprecedented
Marchesi Antinori CEO Renzo Cottarella said that this is the largest wine theft of this scale in Italy.
“A theft of this scale and value has certainly never happened in Italy”, he stressed.
According to him, two trucks loaded with such a large amount of goods cannot simply disappear without a trace. Cottarella expressed optimism that the company will be able to recover at least some of the stolen wine.
The selection of bottles, whose price usually ranges between 150 and 500 euros each, raises doubts that the perpetrators knew the wines well and had inside information about the warehouse and production.
Wave of expensive wine thefts in Italy
Marchesi Antinori was founded in 1385 and exports its products to 170 countries, which places it among the established producers of Italian wines.
The case in Tuscany is part of a series of wine thefts in Italy this year. Two other similar incidents were recorded in the northern Piedmont region, where bottles worth hundreds of thousands of euros were stolen.