ROME -- Thieves stole around 30,000 bottles of premium wine worth about €5 million (US$5.8 million) from a Marchesi Antinori warehouse in Tuscany, Italy’s largest family-run winemaker said on Friday. Antinori, which dates back to 1385 and now exports to 170 countries, has alerted customers worldwide to be wary of offers outside official sales channels following last weekend’s heist and is still hopeful of recovering the stolen wine. It said the thieves took 8,000 to 10,000 bottles of Solaia, one of Italy’s most sought-after labels, as well as Tignanello and Guado al Tasso. The wines retail from €150, but some of the rarest vintages can fetch thousands of euros per bottle. The theft is the latest in a series in Italy, following another in July at the renowned Banfi winery in Montalcino. While such crimes have traditionally involved smaller quantities or a handful of high-value bottles, from restaurants, private cellars or during distribution, recent cases have involved larger stocks held at wineries. Florence-based Antinori said surveillance camera footage showed seven masked men entering its storage facility in Cortona last weekend and disabling its alarm systems before loading thousands of cases of the Tuscan red wines onto two trucks. Antinori said the timing and execution of the theft, which was discovered on Monday morning when staff arrived at the warehouse and is now being investigated by Italian police, suggested a highly organized group was involved. The operation was facilitated by the fact that the wines had been prepared for a shipment to foreign distributors, allowing the thieves to remove a large quantity of high-value bottles quickly, a representative for Antinori told Reuters. (Reporting by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Alvise Armellini and Alexander Smith)
