Thirty thousand bottles vanish in three hours

Masked thieves emptied Marchesi Antinori's warehouse in Cortona, Tuscany on a Saturday night, taking about thirty thousand bottles of premium Italian wine already packed for export.

Alarms switched off from inside before theft

The day before the heist, the alarms had been switched off from inside the building. Lorenzo Vivoli from Antinori's communications office said it appeared the thieves knew everything in advance.

“It's as if they already knew everything”

The biggest wine theft in history

The thieves took roughly ten thousand bottles each of Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso, all from the two thousand twenty-three vintage. Antinori CEO Renzo Cotarella called it unprecedented in scale.

“This is a theft of unprecedented scale for the wine industry in Italy, carried out by a group that was clearly highly organized and well prepared”

Worth eight point two million dollars

At average U.S. retail prices of about four hundred thirty dollars a bottle for Solaia, two hundred for Tignanello and one hundred ninety for Guado al Tasso, the stolen wine is worth about eight point…

Record-breaking theft for wine industry

The theft exceeds the previous Italian record, a two thousand seventeen theft in Cervia worth seven hundred fifty thousand euros, and the costliest wine heist on record, a two point seven million dollar scheme at…

These wines have been counterfeited before

In two thousand nineteen, Italian police arrested three people selling at least eleven thousand counterfeit bottles of Tignanello.

Antinori's anti-counterfeiting marks won't help

Since two thousand sixteen, Antinori has added small labels to bottles that anyone can scan with a phone to verify authenticity.

“They don't help us find the stolen bottles”

Thieves face a hard sell ahead

Antinori is warning partners and customers in one hundred seventy countries about offers outside official channels.

“A quantity of around 30,000 bottles is difficult to move and put back on the market without leaving a trace”