"Uh, Officer, it fell off duh truck."

Beware of anyone offering good deals on expensive wines!

From the Palo Alto Online News:

Half-million dollar wine theft in Atherton

Atherton police are looking for 177 bottles of wine, valued at $531,000, that were reported stolen from the basement of a home on Fair Oaks Lane in Atherton on Thursday, Jan. 4.

Each bottle has a street value of about $3,000, according to Detective Kristin Nichols of the Atherton Police Department. The investigation into the half-million dollar heist is "still in the beginning stages," she said.

Anyone who has an encounter with someone trying to unload wine known to be of high value but for a much lower than expected price should call Atherton police at 650-688-6500, Nichols said.

Nichols said she did not know whether the wine was white or red, nor did she provide any details on how the wine might have been removed from the basement.

Link to article here: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=4317

[James Roscoe]

Damn, Gary, you finally did it! Now we know what you were doing this weekend. Are you going you post tasting notes?

Each bottle has a street value of about $3,000, according to Detective Kristin Nichols of the Atherton Police Department. The investigation into the half-million dollar heist is "still in the beginning stages," she said.

$3,000 per bottle??? WTF? A cellar full of '82 Petrus? Imperials of Vega Sicilia? Could it be a gullible police force and an attempt at insurance fraud?

Mark Lipton, net.skeptic

There's more on the theft in a variety of journals; here's one report of what was actually taken:

Investigators say the criminals removed few lesser-valued bottles and focused on “cult wines” made in limited numbers, often signed by vintners.

Their booty included a magnum of 1959 Petrus worth as much as $6,000 and a difficult-to-assemble set of Bordeaux wines representing an unbroken line of more than 20 years of French harvests.

Few residents with extensive wine cellars will talk on the record about their concerns; they don’t want to publicize their name and become targets themselves.

But the theft—and smaller ones in the past couple years—has rattled collectors in and around Atherton, a well-heeled suburb south of San Francisco where the average household income in 2000 was more than $200,000 and the average home sold for more than $1 million.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_014180653.html

[James Roscoe]

There's more on the theft in a variety of journals; here's one report of what was actually taken:

Investigators say the criminals removed few lesser-valued bottles and focused on “cult wines” made in limited numbers, often signed by vintners.

Their booty included a magnum of 1959 Petrus worth as much as $6,000 and a difficult-to-assemble set of Bordeaux wines representing an unbroken line of more than 20 years of French harvests.

Few residents with extensive wine cellars will talk on the record about their concerns; they don’t want to publicize their name and become targets themselves.

But the theft—and smaller ones in the past couple years—has rattled collectors in and around Atherton, a well-heeled suburb south of San Francisco where the average household income in 2000 was more than $200,000 and the average home sold for more than $1 million.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_014180653.html

Gary, please bring these to MoCool where we can help you hide the evidence. A 1959 Petrus! That's my birth year!

Mark,
I'm cynical enough that almost every time I read of a big theft the question of insurance fraud pops into my head. But in a super-wealthy community, it wouldn't be shocking that cherry picking thieves could get a very high average value from the stars of a big collection. As noted, at least one was a magnum (and I'd call $6000 low for value of '59 Petrus 1.5L). Throw in things like good vintages of La Tache/Romanee Conti or Jayer's Cros Parantoux, '59 TBAs, etc, and it wouldn't be hard to average $3000 (even if some of the bottles were only worth $1500).

Mostly I'm chuckling over the term "street value" as applied to wine.

Mark,
I'm cynical enough that almost every time I read of a big theft the question of insurance fraud pops into my head. But in a super-wealthy community, it wouldn't be shocking that cherry picking thieves could get a very high average value from the stars of a big collection. As noted, at least one was a magnum (and I'd call $6000 low for value of '59 Petrus 1.5L). Throw in things like good vintages of La Tache/Romanee Conti or Jayer's Cros Parantoux, '59 TBAs, etc, and it wouldn't be hard to average $3000 (even if some of the bottles were only worth $1500).

Yes, once it became clear that the thief(ves) cherrypicked the cellar, it made more sense. Still, $3K as an average value for 15 cases of wine is a fairly staggering figure. [snide aside] I bet I know what Web board the owner posts/posted on... and it's not this one.

Mostly I'm chuckling over the term "street value" as applied to wine.

In Atherton, it might be the literal truth

Each bottle has a street value of about $3,000

Oh yeah ---

I love the thought of street pushers whispering "psst, I've got Mouton Rothschild"

If the wines were worth $3K each then their street value is certainly much less.

yep, Atherton is very small and exclusive, median price of homes sold between January-September 2005 was over $3 million (according to Palo Alto Online) and Forbes deemed 94027 the most expensive Zip code in the USA for 2005. So I can believe the $3,000 per bottle figure... just curious about how the thieves got their intelligence about whom to target.

cheers,
al

With his bad back? Impossible!

The New York Times has an interesting spin on this theft; article here; registration required.:

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.

“It’s a worrying thing,” said Ken Chalmers, the assistant manager at Beltramo’s, a local wine purveyor who sells hard-to-come-by vintages to customers with pebbled driveways and lavender-lined walks. “If you drink a bottle of a ’61 Bordeaux every five years and somebody swipes it, you’re not going to be happy. You can’t replace it. Wine is a very personal thing.”

Like a sauvignon blanc with an ash-covered chèvre, theft and wine make a heady pairing, especially in Atherton, the sought-after nesting place of venture capitalists and magnates like Charles Schwab, of the wealth management company, and Tom Proulx, the founder of the software company Intuit. Wine cellars are a fixture of daily life here, a common amenity along with home theaters, fitness centers and his-and-her offices.

At some point between Dec. 28 and Jan. 4, while the homeowner was on vacation, the police said, the thief or thieves made their way to the basement, where the collection, much of it distinguished Bordeaux, was stored at an optimal 55 degrees. The police have not identified the victim. There was no sign of forced entry, indicating the possibility of an inside job, said Detective Sgt. Joseph C. Wade, who is in charge of the investigation. The house is gated, and a code and a key would have been needed to enter it, he said.