WINE HEISTS

Criminals have turned their attention to fine wine theft, costing restaurants and merchants eye-watering sums and devastating their carefully curated cellars. Here’s the background to some of the most audacious and lucrative recent hits

- CHRIS MERCER

Like diamonds or fine art, top wines are on the wish lists of thieves with an eye for luxury, and who appear to know their grands crus from their vins de table.

Swiping hotel room toiletries is one thing, but it requires a different kind of nerve to check out with a bottle of Château d’Yquem 1806 worth an estimated €350,000 tucked into a rucksack. This nightmare scenario played out in October 2021 at Michelin three-star Atrio hotel restaurant in Cáceres, western Spain, when thieves brazenly left with 45 bottles of wine valued by the restaurant at €1.65m (£1.42m).

It is one of several fine wine thefts at top restaurants and merchants’ warehouses in the past few years. Details can be Hollywood-esque, although tales of intrigue, skulduggery and sheer audacity offer little consolation to victims. Financial headaches aside, some bottles are irreplaceable and a cellar will have taken years and much investment to build.

‘To have someone just come in and take it is quite awful,’ Cristina Pérez Olmos, communications director for Madrid’s Michelin two-star Coque restaurant, told Decanter last year after thieves stole about 132 bottles. Police were still investigating, she added in May 2023.

CHOOSING THE VINOUS TARGETS

Maybe the Atrio thieves got lucky by pinching wine royalty that also included Burgundy’s famous Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC). Considering Atrio’s cellar holds 4,500 different wines and a total 39,000 bottles, however, the selection of 45 feels like more than chance.