Italian wine thieves nab $8M of vino in heist. Here's why wine is a 'great target'

Italian wine thieves nab $8M of vino in heist. Here's why wine is a 'great target'

While the theft may be Italy's largest, it's also just the most recent

First, they came for the cheese. Then, they came for the olive oil and the butter.

Now, thieves have come for the good wine, and we have to say, these recent heists are starting to feel personal if you're the type of person who enjoys a little treat.

Last week, a winery in Tuscany revealed that thieves made off with about 30,000 bottles of some of Italy's most prized wines in what the producer described as the country's largest wine theft on record. The sought-after 2023 vintages — including Solaia, Tignanello and Guado al Tasso — are worth an estimated five million euros, or just under $8 million Cdn.

"This is a theft of unprecedented scale for the wine industry in Italy, carried out by a group that was clearly highly organized and well prepared," Renzo Cotarella, chief executive officer of Italy's largest family-run winemaker, Marchesi Antinori, told CBC News in a statement.

While the theft may be Italy's largest, and perhaps most brazen, it's also just the most recent. Last month, 3,000 bottles of Barolo were stolen in the northern Piedmont region, according to French news site Le Monde. In late June, thieves hit the renowned Banfi winery in Montalcino, nabbing 3,000 bottles of sparkling wine, noted an Italian news site.

It's also not just an Italian problem.

Globally, some notable recent heists include the thief who made off with about 800 bottles from a California wine shop in 2023, a couple who stole about $1.7 million US worth of rare wine from a Michelin-starred restaurant in Spain in 2021, and criminals who stole 500 kilograms' worth of white wine grapes — equivalent to about 350 bottles of wine — from a Quebec vineyard in 2020.

Benoit Giroussens, the vineyard manager at Vignoble et Cidrerie Coteau Rougemont in Quebec, is pictured in 2020 after thieves ripped the grapes off the vines and stuffed them into garbage bags. (Sarah Leavitt/CBC)

Heists and large-scale thefts are on the rise, said Rod Phillips, a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who specializes in the history of alcohol. Fine wine has a big black market, Phillips said, and plenty of people are willing to purchase expensive wine at a lower price.

"There are various channels to selling fine wine and I think they're all very receptive these days, now that everybody is under financial pressure," Phillips told CBC News.

It also packs a lot of value into a small amount of product, with a single case sometime worth thousands of euros, said wine expert Natalie MacLean. It doesn't spoil, either, meaning thieves can sit on it for years before selling — and unlike a painting, a case of wine isn't one of a kind.

"I do think it's a trend," MacLean told CBC News. "People are looking to cash in and wine is a great target."

The most recent theft targeted Marchesi Antinori's facility near Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, and appeared to be planned down to the finest detail, according to Italian news site Rai news.

Seven thieves disabled the alarm system and surveillance cameras, then used the company's own forklifts to load two trucks with wine and then flee into the night, Cotarella, the winery chief executive, told The Associated Press.

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Depending on how they package them, that's about 2,500 cases of wine to lift and load, Phillips noted.

"You don't move that very quickly ... and it's obviously got to be very well planned," he said.

Police and Carabinieri officers are examining surveillance footage and other evidence, The Associated Press said. CBC News has reached out to the local police department and Carabinieri for more information and not yet heard back.

"We are co-operating closely with the authorities and informing our partners and customers around the world, asking them to pay particular attention to any offers outside official distribution channels," Cotarella told CBC News.

A view shows vineyards and the exterior of the Marchesi Antinori winery in Bargino, near Florence, Italy, in this undated handout image. (Marchesi Antinori Press/Handout/Reuters)

The stolen bottles were all from the 2023 vintage and are typically sold at a retail price of between 150 and 500 euros each (between $240 and $800 Cdn). They included about 10,000 bottles of Solaia, one of Antinori's flagship wines.

Antinori makes only 60,000 to 70,000 bottles of Solaia a year, explained MacLean, the wine expert. That's about a sixth of a vintage gone in one night.

"The Solaia loss is staggering," she said.

The theft was discovered Oct. 5, but the company made it public on Oct. 9 to avoid interfering with the investigation.

"People at the winery were crying," Cotarella told the Financial Review.

"It's not just the value of the wine — it's something more. We can survive without this wine, but what makes me so sad is the fact that this could happen to us."

A short history of recent heists

Until recently, most wine crime usually involved fraud as opposed to theft, said Phillips, the historian. Counterfeit Canadian ice wines made and sold in China, for instance, damaged sales in Ontario some 20 years ago.

"These heists are more of a recent phenomenon," he said.

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It's also not just wine that thieves are getting their hands on. In August, thieves made off with 40,000 pounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon and non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee beer in Southern California. Police estimated that the stolen beer was worth almost $100,000 Cdn.

There have also been a number of major food-related heists recently, which some analysts have linked to rising food prices.

Last year, Montreal police said over $1 million worth of olive oil was stolen after a delivery involving two transport companies in the city never arrived at its destination in Ontario. Police in Ontario that year also charged six people with a string of butter and ghee thefts, with losses of more than $60,000.

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Also in 2025, 40,000 oysters, lobster worth $568,000 Cdn and a cache of crab meat all were stolen in separate incidents within weeks of each other in New England. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, someone stole 100,000 organic eggs valued at about $57,000 Cdn off the back of a distribution trailer.

Of course, the cheese world is still reeling after a 2024 U.K. cheese heist that saw con artists make off with more than £300,000 (or more than $540,000 Cdn) in cloth-bound, award-winning cheddar.

The same year, B.C. RCMP revealed they'd recently foiled an attempted cheese heist at a Whole Foods in North Vancouver. They'd been on patrol Sept. 29, 2024, when they found a cart full of cheese outside the grocery store. A suspect fled on foot, leaving $12,800 worth of cheese behind.

But Canada's most famous food theft is likely the notorious 2012 maple syrup heist, where thieves in Quebec stole more than $18 million worth of the sweet stuff.

Natalie Stechyson has been a writer and editor at CBC News since 2021. She covers stories on social trends, families, gender, human interest, as well as general news. She's worked as a journalist since 2009, with stints at the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News, among others. Before joining CBC News, she was the parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award for her work on pregnancy loss. You can reach her at natalie.stechyson@cbc.ca.