Tuscany thieves swipe 30,000 bottles of Italy's finest wines in a record $5.6 million heist: 'A theft of this size and value has never occurred'

The latest theft happened in Tuscany, at a storage facility for Marchesi Antinori, a wine company that dates back to 1385.

The thieves took a staggering 30,000 bottles, valued at 5 million euros, or nearly $5.6 million.

‘Two trucks cannot just disappear’

The Financial Times reported that the storage facility in Cortona, Tuscany, was hit just ahead of a large international shipment of some of the firm’s most valuable bottles.

The FT says that seven masked people managed to disable the warehouse’s alarm and carry out the theft, loading the wine, which sells for between 150 to 500 euros ($167 to $558) a bottle, into two huge trucks.

The BBC reported that the thieves used the company’s own forklifts to load up their booty.

Chief executive of Marchesi Antinori, Renzo Cotarella, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, “A theft of this scale and value has certainly never occurred in Italy,” the BBC reported.

Cotarella told FT that he was hopeful that the stolen wine could be recovered.

“We still hope we are able to find the wine ... two trucks cannot just disappear,” Cotarella told FT. “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 Guardian reported that the company’s insurance would not cover a theft of this magnitude.

Cotarella told Corriere della Sera, “We had always considered the possibility of having a few cases of wine being stolen during their transportation, but certainly not that two trucks manage to enter the cellar and make off with such a huge haul,” the Guardian reported.

A string of thefts

The FT noted that this type of coordinated, large scale operation differs from how wine theft typically goes down in Italy.

“Thieves have typically targeted Michelin-starred restaurants with well-stocked wine cellars and made off with a handful of highly valuable bottles worth tens of thousands of euros each,” the FT reported, highlighting one such robbery that took place this summer.

“Two men dressed as workers wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests managed to open holes in shatterproof glass at Milan’s famed Affinatore restaurant to seize several bottles of prized Romanée-Conti wine,” the article states. It was worth a total of 280,000 euros, or $312,000.

But two other heists took place this year that mirror what happened at Marchesi Antinori.

Italian wine firm Castello Banfi suffered a robbery in June from a facility in Piedmont that saw thieves get away with 3,300 bottles with a total value of nearly $115,000, Wine Spectator reported.

President of Castello Banfi, Rodolfo Maralli, told Wine Spectator, “They were professionals.”

Maralli told Wine Spectator that he believes the crooks had knowledge of the facility.

Wine Spectator reported that the criminals “knew where the wine was, how to access it and how to disable alarm systems.”

In September, Conterno Fantino winery, also in Piedmont, was robbed by four thieves who took 3,000 bottles of Barolo wines, FT reported. Those thieves, too, used a forklift that was in the warehouse.