Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine collectively value about €5m (£4.2m) from a prestigious Italian vineyard, Italian media reports.
Marchesi Antinori, one of Italy’s greatest family-owned wineries, said the theft at its storage facility in Tuscany took place on Saturday as the company was making ready to ship a consignment to clients overseas.
At least seven masked males are believed to have deactivated the alarms, disabled the cameras and used company forklifts to load two giant vans of the company’s prized Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso Tuscan reds.
Renzo Cotarella, the chief govt, advised Corriere della Sera this was the largest theft of its type in Italy.
“A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy,” he said.
He added that he was hopeful the authorities would be in a position to hint the stolen wine.
“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 stolen from us.”
He advised the Financial Times: “These wines have a great value and I don’t know how they can sell all this wine around the world without being seen.”
The company believes the choice of bottles, which often promote for between €150 and €500 each, suggests the thieves were wine connoisseurs and had inside information.
The theft was only found on Monday morning as employees arrived on website. No arrests have been made.
Marchesi Antinori was based in 1385 and exports to 170 international locations. It had a income of €263m (£223m) last yr.
There has been a spate of wine thefts in Italy this yr, including two in the northern Piedmont area where a whole lot of 1000’s of euros value of bottles were reportedly taken.
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