30,000 Bottles of €5m Italian Wine Vanished in High‑Profile Heist
Masked burglars slipped into Marchesi Antinori’s storage facility in Tuscany on Saturday, deactivating alarms, disabling cameras and loading two trucks with prized bottles of Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso, according to Italian media reports.
The theft, which the winery announced on Monday, was discovered only when staff returned to find the cellar empty. Authorities have yet to make any arrests.
Renzo Cotarella, chief executive, told the Financial Times that this was the largest such theft in Italy’s history. “A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy,” he said. “Two trucks full of merchandise can’t just disappear into thin air. The Tuscan roads are full of cameras; perhaps with a bit of luck we’ll be able to recover at least some of the bottles.”
Experts believe the careful selection of bottles—each priced between €150 and €500—suggests the thieves were wine connoisseurs with inside knowledge. Marchesi Antinori, founded in 1385, has generated €263m in revenue last year and exports to 170 countries.
This incident follows a surge of wine thefts across Italy, including two stabb loot events in Piedmont that reportedly totaled hundreds of thousands of euros in stolen bottles. The wine industry is now on high alert as thieves increasingly target high‑value cellar stock in an untouched yet lucrative black‑market opportunity.
