$5m of Aussie fine wine ‘vanishes’

More than 30,000 bottles of Penfolds Grange, Torbreck and Henschke has gone missing in Australia after the storage company they were being held in went into receivership.

The bottles, worth an estimated AU$5 million, were being held in a warehouse run by Wine Investment Services (WIS) in New South Wales.

WIS was part of a group of companies owned by James Estate Wines in Hunter Valley, which went into receivership in 2013 with debts of at least $11m. Its assets were seized at the time but a search of the warehouse in March of this year revealed that the wine – belonging to around 300 people – was no longer there.

Among the missing wines are various vintages of Penfolds Grange including some bottles of the 1951, vintages of Henschke Hill of Graces and a number of Torbreck wines such as ‘The Descendant’ and ‘Runrig’.

The NSW Fraud and Cybercrime squad has set up Strike Force Farrington to investigate the disappearance.The NSW police commissioner, Catherine Burn, said: “This is a specific area of demand and supply and sale, so we know that there are some people out there who will know if this wine is out there, potentially being sold and anyone who has information, that would help us greatly.”

“There’s in excess of 30,000 bottles of wine missing, you just can’t move 30,000 bottles of wine in a vehicle or in a small ute,” said acting superintendent, matthew Craft.

“You would need a large truck it would take a long time, it would be very heavy. We believe there are certain people out there who would have seen something.”