Thieves have stolen 30,000 bottles of wine worth about €5m (£4.2m) from Marchesi Antinori, one of Italy’s biggest family-owned wineries, Italian media reports say.
The theft took place on Saturday at the company’s storage facility in Tuscany as staff prepared to ship a consignment to customers abroad.
Renzo Cotarella, the winery’s chief executive, described the incident as the largest wine theft of its kind in Italy.
“A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy,” he told Corriere della Sera.
At least seven masked men are believed to have disabled the security systems before using the company’s forklifts to load two large trucks with bottles of its prized Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso wines.
The suspects reportedly deactivated the alarms and disabled security cameras before carrying out the operation.
Cotarella said he hoped investigators would trace the stolen bottles, pointing to the extensive network of surveillance cameras along roads in Tuscany.
“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 said.
He also questioned how the thieves could sell such a large quantity of expensive wine internationally without attracting attention.
“These wines have a great value and I don’t know how they can sell all this wine around the world without being seen,” he told the Financial Times.
The winery believes the selection of bottles suggests the thieves had specialist knowledge of wine and may have had inside information.
The stolen bottles typically sell for between €150 and €500 each.
The theft was discovered on Monday morning when staff arrived at the facility. No arrests have been made.
Founded in 1385, Marchesi Antinori exports its wines to 170 countries. The company recorded revenue of €263m (£223m) last year.
The theft comes amid a series of wine robberies reported in Italy this year. In the northern Piedmont region, two separate incidents reportedly involved the theft of bottles worth hundreds of thousands of euros.
Erizia Rubyjeana
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