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Add Texture to GoogleEarly Monday morning, October 5, 2026, the first employees at the Cortona facility arrived for work. The pallets they had lined up for export were no longer there. Over the weekend, approximately 30,000 bottles of Solaia, Tignanello, and Guado al Tasso—all from the 2023 vintage—left the Marchesi Antinori warehouse aboard two trucks. The loss is estimated at approximately 5 million euros. Renzo Cotarella, the company’s CEO, calls it the largest wine theft ever recorded in Italy.
One Night, Two Trucks
The incident occurred on the night of Saturday, October 3, to Sunday, October 4. The targeted site is nothing like a château cellar where a few old vintages lie dormant. It is the group’s main logistics hub, located in the province of Arezzo, where orders are stored and prepared before being shipped to foreign markets. In other words, it is the place where the finished wine—labeled, packaged, and stacked onto full pallets—awaits shipment.
The sequence of events described by investigators resembles a cargo-handling operation more than a burglary. The intrusion alarms were methodically disabled. The video surveillance cameras, both inside and around the perimeter, were shut off. Once on site, the thieves used the company’s forklifts to load the pre-assembled pallets, then hauled the merchandise away in two large trucks or vans.
The group is believed to have consisted of at least five to seven masked individuals. This figure remains an estimate, based on fragments of footage captured before the cameras were shut off and on the nature of the operation. Loading 30,000 bottles in a single night without being detected would, in any case, require a large number of people, equipment, and detailed knowledge of the premises.
The 2023 vintage depleted
The three wines taken belong to the Super Tuscan category—the reds that have built the winery’s international reputation. Tignanello, Solaia, and Guado al Tasso—the latter produced in Bolgheri—are also among the most sought-after labels in the catalog. The theft involved all the bottles from the 2023 vintage in the shipment.
For Solaia, the loss is estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000 bottles. Given an annual production of around 60,000 to 70,000 bottles, this represents nearly 15% of an entire vintage that will never be served where it was intended. For a family that has been in the wine business since 1385 and is now in its 26th generation, the loss is more symbolic than financial: it is a portion of a year’s work that is now circulating beyond their control.
The Value of a Stolen Bottle
The figure of 5 million euros—equivalent to approximately 5.8 million dollars at the October 2026 exchange rate—must be understood for what it is: a general estimate based on retail and market prices, not an accounting valuation determined after a joint inventory with the insurers. It remains consistent with the nature of the loot. Specifically, the bottles from the 2023 vintage in question sell for between 120 and 500 euros depending on the label, and the estimated amount corresponds to an average price of about 166 euros per bottle.
For the group as a whole, which posted revenue of 263 million euros in the previous fiscal year, the loss represents just under 2% of annual sales. The problem lies elsewhere. The estate’s insurance policy would not cover a theft of this magnitude: at the time the policy was taken out, a loss of this scale simply had not been anticipated. It seems no one had imagined that a wine warehouse could be emptied the way a warehouse full of everyday goods is emptied.
That leaves the question that haunts everyone following the case: what to do with 30,000 bottles of fine Tuscan wines from the same vintage? They cannot be sold discreetly, one bottle at a time. It is precisely on this front that the company has chosen to take action. Marchesi Antinori has issued an international warning to restaurateurs, wine merchants, auction houses, and importers. Any offer of Solaia, Tignanello, or Guado al Tasso 2023 at a rock-bottom price, outside of official distribution channels, should raise suspicions. Private buyers, meanwhile, can turn to the estate’s official online store, which remains the primary direct channel.
A trend causing concern in the industry
The theft in Cortona did not come out of the blue. Since the summer, the Italian wine industry has seen a surge in targeted attacks. In July 2026, 3,300 bottles disappeared from the Castello Banfi estate in Montalcino, also in Tuscany. In mid-September, in Piedmont, 3,000 bottles of Barolo Sorì Ginestra were stolen from the Conterno Fantino estate in Monforte d’Alba, resulting in an estimated loss of between 300,000 and 400,000 euros. This theft in Piedmont is a separate incident: no bottles of Barolo were among those taken from Antinori.
The scale of the thefts, however, is incomparable. In Cortona, the volume is about ten times greater than in either of the two previous incidents, and the estimated loss is more than ten times greater than that in Piedmont. The head of Marchesi Antinori raised the possibility that the same gang might be behind these various heists. This is a working hypothesis: at this stage, investigators have not established any formal link between the three cases.
Another theory is circulating, though just as cautiously: that of an inside job or a commissioned theft. It is based on the precision of the targeting and the timing—a weekend when full pallets were ready to be shipped for export. Nothing, for the time being, confirms this from a legal standpoint. Above all, it reflects the perplexity surrounding an operation that seemed to know exactly what to take, where to find it, and how to load it.
The investigation is on the right track
The police and the Carabinieri have taken over the case. The public announcement of the theft, on Friday, October 9, was deliberately delayed by a few days at the request of the investigators, in order to protect the initial inquiries. Thus, there were four days of silence between the discovery of the missing pallets and the announcement.
In the absence of usable footage from inside the site, investigators turned their attention to the outside. Two heavy-duty trucks loaded with wine do not travel through Tuscany without leaving a trail. The region’s network of highway surveillance cameras was combed through to reconstruct their route from Cortona, in the hope of determining where those 30,000 bottles of the 2023 vintage were unloaded.