Magnum cum fraude

It was perhaps the most Californian of crimes. Behind the electronic gates and freshly clipped hedges of an exclusive cul-de-sac, the thieves worked in the dead of night, ignoring watches, laptops and other ho-hum booty to cart away the ultimate prize: 450 bottles of wine, including a rare $11,000 1959 magnum from the Château Pétrus in Bordeaux, France.

Thus began what the police in this Silicon Valley town, one of the country’s most affluent ZIP codes, refer to as “the big wine caper” — a $100,000 theft, still under investigation, whose audacity has inspired Agatha Christie-like fascination among sophisticated oenophiles in the Bay Area.

Better not mention what the plonk-drinking polloi make of it all.

The crime is perhaps understandable given record increases in wine prices at auction, said Thomas Matthews, the editor of Wine Spectator, which recently reported on counterfeiting, in which labels are falsified.

Will the villains stop at nothing?!

Unlike missing art and antiquities, hot wine has no official registry. “Something like an Amber alert would be very useful,” said George Derbalian, the president of Atherton Wine Imports, an importer of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

Amber? I would think red would be the only appropriate color here. From the NY Times.

Posted by David on February 1, 2007 10:04 PM