Thieves steal 30,000 bottles worth 5 million euros from Marchesi Antinori cellar in Cortona

The theft

Thieves stole 30,000 bottles of wine worth 5 million euros from the Cortona (Arezzo) cellar of Marchesi Antinori, according to ANSA. All of the bottles are from the 2023 vintage, and 10,000 of them are Solaia. A group of at least seven people carried out the theft during the night of last Sunday. They disabled the alarm system and put the cellar cameras out of use, then brought in two trucks and loaded the bottles with the company's own forklifts. The loss was discovered on Monday morning, when employees arrived and found the wine gone.

What was taken

Three wines were taken: Solaia, Tignanello and Guado al Tasso. Corriere della Sera gives a price of 120 euros per bottle for Tignanello and 300 euros for Solaia, while Il Sole 24 ORE puts the usual retail price of the stolen bottles between 150 and 500 euros each. Solaia is produced at about 60-70 thousand bottles a year, so the 10,000 stolen bottles are a large share of annual output. Corriere della Sera notes that a sudden rise in the supply of these bottles makes it hard not to suspect the market. The paper also describes the 2023 vintage as perhaps the best of the last twenty years.

Tignanello was created in the 1970s thanks to the creative work of the oenologist Giacomo Tachis, who also signed the Sassicaia. Corriere della Sera reports that the company was founded in Florence in 1385 and has operated for 26 generations, and that it is now chaired by Albiera Antinori.

Company response

Renzo Cotarella, the chief executive of Marchesi Antinori, described the gang to Corriere della Sera.

It is certainly a very well-prepared gang, perhaps the same one that has struck other wineries in Italy in recent months. Certainly a theft of this size and value has never happened in Italy.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Cotarella said he still hoped to recover the wine.

We still hope to find the wine, two trucks cannot simply disappear.

Cotarella added that the wines have great value and that he could not understand how they could be sold around the world without being seen. He said Antinori wants to protect the market by warning buyers that bottles offered through unusual sources at attractive prices could be stolen goods. The company said it is informing customers around the world and asking them to be wary of offers made outside official channels. Corriere della Sera reports that the company's theft insurance did not cover a value of this size, and that buying stolen goods is a criminal offence of receiving stolen property.

Investigation

Police are investigating, but no arrests had been made when Il Sole 24 ORE reported the case. ANSA reports that the cellar cameras were disabled, while Il Sole 24 ORE says the company holds numerous camera recordings of the theft, so the accounts differ on that point. Il Sole 24 ORE describes the theft as the latest in a series of wine thefts in Italy, and Cotarella suggested the same gang may have hit other Italian wineries in recent months. Corriere della Sera says it remains unclear where the cargo is headed, and that it could be sold to collectors or to restaurant and bar owners. Cotarella said he hoped that the many cameras on Tuscan roads might help recover at least some of the bottles.