Thieves steal about 30,000 bottles of wine worth €5m from Italy's Marchesi Antinori

Thieves stole about 30,000 bottles of premium wine from Marchesi Antinori, a family-owned winery in Tuscany, Italy. The wine is valued at about €5m (about $5.8m).

The theft took place on a Saturday, while the company was preparing a shipment to customers abroad. Staff discovered it on Monday morning when they arrived at the site. The reports reviewed by Vocemundi do not give the calendar date.

The thieves were masked. They disabled the alarms and surveillance cameras and used the company's own forklifts to load the wine. They used two vehicles. The stolen wines included Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso.

Marchesi Antinori was founded in 1385. Its chief executive is Renzo Cotarella.

Other reported details

According to Reuters, the company announced the theft on Friday. Reuters said the wine was taken from a warehouse. The Guardian described the site as the company's cellar in Cortona. The BBC called it a storage facility.

According to the Guardian, all the stolen bottles are from the 2023 vintage. They included 3,000 bottles of Barolo Ginestra, some of them magnum-sized. The Guardian also reported that the company's insurance does not cover a theft of such high value. It said investigators are still searching for the wine. The company has warned customers to be wary of offers outside official channels, the Guardian reported.

According to the BBC, no arrests have been made. The BBC said the company exports to 170 countries and had revenue of €263m last year.

Other Italian wineries have been robbed this year, including in Piedmont. The BBC reported two earlier thefts there involving bottles worth hundreds of thousands of euros. According to the Guardian, one took place in Alba in mid-September.

What is disputed

• People involved: at least seven, according to the BBC and the Guardian; five or six, according to the company, as reported by Le Monde.
• Vehicles: two large trucks (BBC, Guardian) or two vans (Le Monde).
• Bottle prices: €150 to €500 each (BBC) or €120 to €400 each (Guardian).

What each side says

The BBC reported that Cotarella told Corriere della Sera: "A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy." The BBC also quoted him as saying: "Two trucks full of merchandise can't just disappear into thin air." He said Tuscan roads have many cameras.

The Guardian reported that he told Corriere della Sera: "The gang was very prepared." According to the Guardian, he suspects the same gang may be linked to earlier winery thefts. The reports do not establish any such link.

The company said the choice of bottles suggests the thieves were wine connoisseurs with inside knowledge, according to the BBC. The reports do not offer evidence for this beyond the company's view. They also do not include any statement from police, carabinieri or prosecutors.

Analysis

The reports leave key questions open. These include how the thieves got past the security systems, whether the vehicles have been traced, and how far the losses exceed the insurance cover. Cotarella has said road cameras could help recovery. He has also questioned how such a large quantity of high-value wine could be sold unnoticed. Corriere della Sera, as cited by the Guardian, noted that a sudden rise in supply could raise suspicion. The investigation could recover some of the wine, or the wine could stay missing. Any link to the Piedmont thefts remains unproven until investigators comment.

Produced by the Vocemundi newsroom with AI assistance.