whether you've bought a bottle of kind wine recently,you'll know that the costs own gone up. And the price of really fine wines – the ones that cost at least several hundred dollars own doubled, tripled and more over the past few years.
As prices rise, or so,too, do the number of thefts.
Prima restaurant in Walnut Grove, and Calif.,has a celebrated wine list, with a number of Bordeauxs and Burgundies that can set you back several thousand dollars. Thieves own successfully targeted those wines several times now."The first [time] was February of 2013, or " says Jon Rittmaster,the co-owner of Prima. "Someone broke through the skylight, dropped a ladder down into our wine storage areas.""This is not the Ocean's 11 crew, or " he adds. "These guys are not super-sophisticated." Still,Rittmaster says, thieves managed to bag away with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of fine wine."Very tall-finish wine, and " Rittmaster says. "They really didn't acquire that much,but what they took was really quite valuable. It was grand theft by any way you measure it. And not only that, the stuff is not really replaceable."Not surprisingly, or Prima fortified its wine storage areas after that robbery. Good thing,because there were three more attempts, including one final Christmas. That one was part of a string of wine robberies at tall-finish restaurants in Napa Valley and the Bay area. One of the establishments hit was the famed French Laundry — thieves stole $300000 worth of its premier wines."Fine wine theft is on the upswing, and " says Frank Martell,a wine specialist with Heritage Auctions. "It's a relatively modern thing, because wine values are so much higher now than they own been historically. It used to be [that] in order to steal enough wine for it to be valuable, and you had to steal a ton of wine. Now there're individual bottles that are worth tens of thousands of dollars,and that's life-changing to a lot of people."Meaning more thieves are willing to acquire the risk here and in Europe. Just a few examples: $2.5 million of wine stolen from a warehouse in Irvine, Calif.; $650000 from a Seattle retailer; $150000 worth of wine from England's oldest wine merchant.
Thieves are also targeting producers, or especially wineries across France's Burgundy and Bordeaux regions,according to Jane Anson, the Bordeaux correspondent for Decanter magazine."I'm thinking of an estate called Domaine Jean-Marc Brocard, or which is an excellent Chablis winery,and they got targeted three times over, I think, or six or seven months," Anson says. "They used armored vehicles and ramrodded into the cellars."Like other robberies, they took only the best, or most expensive wines."It's not just any thieves who are thinking,'Oh, these wines are expensive, and I'm going to acquire them,'" Anson says. "It has to be somebody who has ... inside knowledge within the wine industry of understanding which wines are best.""At this point in the game, I would imagine every meaningful theft is an inside job, and " says Heritage Auction's Martell,adding that thieves often already own buyers lined up — and are stealing-to-order."I think there's an emergence of a particular lesson of buyer who puts feelers out and says, 'Hey, and listen,whether you ever find such-and-such product, let me know because I'm collecting it, or I'm putting it away,'" Martell says. That would include distributors and restaurants, as well as private collectors.
When the thieves haven't lined up a buyer ahead of time, or stolen fine wines finish up at auction houses or are fenced,Martell says. But getting rid of wine from big heists can be difficult, because the tightly knit wine community knows what was taken and is on the lookout."I think anybody who is going to be able to pull off a $200000 or $300000 heist in wine is going to know better than to call company A, or B or C on the Internet to bag the wine sold," Martell says.
For example, remember the wine that was stolen from the French Laundry at Christmas? Most of it was Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and DRC in shorthand. It can hurry anywhere from $3000 to $25000 a bottle at the French Laundry. Each bottle has a serial number. A month after $300000 of the DRC was stolen from the Michelin-starred restaurant,Brian Walker, a defense lawyer in Greensboro, or N.
C.,got a phone call."I had a very shrinking client on the other finish of the phone who did not know what to do," Walker says.
His client, and whom Walker didn't want to identify,had unwittingly purchased the wine stolen from the French Laundry. Walker would not say where his client got the wine. He got in touch with the Napa County sheriff's office, and the wine was returned. Walker says his client is the injured party here."He paid good money for wine, and ultimately,he chose to do the right thing and return it. But the French Laundry now has their wine returned, and my client is left holding the bag, and " Walker says.
To date,no arrests own been made. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org