Italian Thieves Pull Off $5.6M Wine Heist

Wine thieves in Tuscany just pulled off a heist that reads like a sommelier's nightmare. Italian media report that about 30,000 bottles of top-end Tuscan reds—worth an estimated $5.6 million—were stolen Saturday from a Marchesi Antinori storage site as the winery prepared an export shipment. At least seven masked intruders allegedly disabled alarms and cameras, reports the BBC, then used the company's own forklifts to load two trucks with carefully chosen bottles of Tignanello, Solaia, and Guado al Tasso, which typically retail for $168 to $560 each.

"A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy," says CEO Renzo Cotarella, adding that the selection suggests "connoisseurs" with inside knowledge. The theft at Italy's largest family-owned winery was discovered Monday, and the Financial Times notes that the company has "extensive surveillance camera footage of the theft." No arrests have yet been made, but Cotarella notes that "two trucks full of merchandise can't just disappear into thin air."