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News
French man arrested for stealing 7,000 bottles of wine
A man has been arrested in Burgundy for allegedly stealing 7,000 bottles of wine that could be worth as much as €500,000.
According to the reports, prosecutors said that the wine was stolen from a number of places where he worked in the highly-valued wine producing region.
He was finally caught by a security camera stealing four bottles of wine. His employer then went to the police, according to the local newspaper Journal de Saone-et-Loire, which first reported on the case.
The 56 year old man was arrested and placed on bail under judicial supervision until his trail, which is scheduled for 6 August, Dijon prosecutor Olivier Caracotch told AFP
The man is suspected of undertaking the theft of the bottles over several years from wine houses in the growing region of Beaune in the Côte d’Or, according to Caracotch.
Following his arrest after being seen stealing the four bottles, the police searched his home, where they discovered nearly 7,000 bottles of wine.
Cellars
Investigators discovered several cellars at the property which housed the allegedly stolen wine, including bottles from his current place of work as well as other producers where the man had also previously worked.
According to the news, he accumulated the bottles over approximately a fifteen year period, and also lined the walls of a cellar at his mother’s house with wine as well.
Bottles included grand crus such as Vosne-Romanée and other prestigious producers from the area.
There was no indication though that he “resold the slightest bottle”, according to the prosecutor.
Value
Wine theft is surprisingly common in France, especially as some of the bottles are valued at several thousand pounds.
In 2020, an operation by a French police and gendarme strike force dubbed ‘Magnum’ recovered more than €5 million worth of stolen fine wines and resulted in the arrests of over 20 people.
In addition in 2021, police in France recovered 1,000 bottles of stolen wine and arrested 10 people in connection with two separate burglaries at estates in Burgundy.
Only last month, an inventory of the cellar of Paris’ historic La Tour d’Argent revealed that 83 bottles of wine, including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, had inexplicably vanished.