The perfect theft? The one that ends up on the table. The case of the Barolo thieves

During the night of 16–17 September, four masked men entered the Conterno Fantino winery, on the Bricco della Ginestra hill in Monforte d’Alba. They emerged three hours later with around three thousand bottles of Barolo. They operated the winery’s forklift trucks with the confident (and gloved) hand that a novice would usually lack. They then loaded two of the winery’s vans – the winery having also provided the transport – and pushed them out to the main road, starting the engines only when the noise could no longer wake anyone. Among the cargo, alongside magnums and jeroboams, was a considerable quantity of Sorì Ginestra from recent vintages. The news broke five days later, with the damage estimated at hundreds of thousands of euros.

At the end of June, it was the turn of the Banfi winery in Strevi, Piedmont: there too, three thousand bottles of Alta Langa were taken away in whole pallets, selected label by label. The damage in that case was more modest, but the method was identical. Two such incidents three months apart look very much like a job carried out to order.

The theory that this was a contract job links it to art thefts: thieves who know what to take, where to find it, and, in all likelihood, to whom to deliver it. The reaction of the wineries also resembles that of a museum. Banfi pointed out that its flagship labels are traceable throughout the supply chain and asked customers and trade operators to report any bottles appearing through unusual channels. Conterno Fantino made the same appeal to wine traders, urging them to call the Carabinieri if they encounter any suspicious offers. This is how a stolen painting is ‘burned’: it is made so recognisable that no legitimate market will ever touch it again.

Except that a painting can spend thirty years rolled up in a garage and then resurface at an auction or in an investigation, with its identity intact, waiting to be revealed. A bottle of 2021 Barolo is meant to be uncorked, and the batch code protects it only as long as the cork remains in place. All it takes is a careless wholesaler in a distant country for the stolen goods to end up in people’s glasses. The young vintages, which no collector would ever display, are precisely the ones that are served without too many questions asked. At the time of the heist, those three thousand bottles had something of the nature of works of art, but by the time they were resold, they had become mere commodities. And a commodity, once consumed, ceases to exist as evidence.

And yet, wine thefts that really do resemble art thefts do exist. In October 2021, a couple booked dinner and a room at the Atrio in Cáceres, in Extremadura, and during the night emptied part of the wine cellar: forty-five bottles, including thirty-eight Romanée-Conti and one Château d’Yquem from 1806, worth over one and a half million euros. The pair were arrested in Croatia the following summer and sentenced to four and a half years. The bottles, as far as is known, have never resurfaced: those familiar with that market suspected collectors might be keeping them safe, just as one would with a stolen Caravaggio. At the trial, the defendant asked the judges, if he was indeed the thief, where they had ended up. In Monforte, the same question will probably have a simpler answer: in some wine glass, after letting it breathe.