Thieves Steal 3,000 Bottles of Expensive Wine and Escape With Winery’s Own Vans

Thieves have stolen around 3,000 bottles of expensive Barolo wine from a winery in Italy.

The robbery happened in the Langhe area of Piedmont, with the stolen wine reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of euros.

According to the winery owners, four masked thieves managed to bypass the security system and entered the building through an open window during the night.

CCTV footage reportedly shows a man dressed in black and wearing a balaclava walking around the warehouse at around midnight.

He then started a forklift and used it as the thieves began moving boxes filled with wine.

Among the stolen bottles were 1.5-litre Magnum bottles and three-litre Jeroboam bottles from 2021 and 2022.

The 2021 wines are considered particularly valuable and can be stored for many years.

Barolo is a famous Italian red wine that is sometimes described as the “king of wines”.

It is produced from Nebbiolo grapes in the Piedmont region under strict rules, including a long ageing process. Some high-end bottles of Barolo can sell for thousands of euros.

After removing the wine from the warehouse, the thieves reportedly loaded the boxes into two vans belonging to the winery.

They then pushed the vans some distance away before starting the engines, apparently to avoid making enough noise to alert anyone nearby.

The entire robbery reportedly lasted around three hours.

The thieves and the stolen wine have not yet been found.

“It was the middle of the night, we didn’t notice anything,” the winery owner told the newspaper. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t start anything against a clearly well-prepared theft.

Italian military police, the Carabinieri, have launched an investigation and examined CCTV footage from the winery.

Police are also searching for the two stolen vans, which could contain evidence that may help identify the thieves.

The Carabinieri have asked “anyone who receives unusual offers around these wines” to contact authorities.