30,000 Bottles of Wine Worth €5 Million Stolen in Major Italian Winery Heist

Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine valued at approximately €5 million (£4.2 million) from a prestigious Italian winery in Tuscany, according to Italian media reports. The theft occurred at a storage facility belonging to Marchesi Antinori, one of Italy's largest family-owned wineries, on Saturday.

At least seven masked individuals are believed to have disabled alarms and security cameras before using company forklifts to load the stolen wine onto two large trucks. The stolen bottles include prized Tuscan reds such as Tignanello, Solaia, and Guado al Tasso.

Renzo Cotarella, the chief executive of Marchesi Antinori, described the incident as the largest theft of its kind ever to occur in Italy. "A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy," he stated.

Cotarella expressed hope that authorities would be able to track the stolen wine, noting that "Two trucks full of merchandise can't just disappear into thin air." He added that the numerous cameras along Tuscan roads might aid in the recovery of at least some of the bottles.

He also commented to the Financial Times that the significant value of these wines made their discreet resale challenging. "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 suspects the thieves possessed insider knowledge and were wine connoisseurs, given the specific selection of bottles. The stolen wine typically retails for between €150 and €500 per bottle.

Staff discovered the theft on Monday morning upon arriving at the facility. No arrests have been made.

Marchesi Antinori, founded in 1385, exports its wines to 170 countries and reported a revenue of €263 million (£223 million) last year. This incident follows a series of wine thefts in Italy this year, including two in the Piedmont region where hundreds of thousands of euros worth of wine were reportedly taken.