ThePortForum.com

Yikes

Let's hope that the Noval Nacional 11 was not on Level B!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... pagne.html

Inside job; DNA on party glasses: they'll be doing porridge. With tea not wine.

Inside or well planned. There is a black market for "stolen to order" wines from organized groups.


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Everybody can relax, I had an email from Berrys telling me my wines were unaffected. Possibly my lack of Latour and Petrus could have helped.

There's something slightly surreal about this - very careful planning to work out how to gain entry and get past the alarms, and then the muppets who did the job went and left an obvious DNA source..

Inside job certainly, either within BBR or their security contractor - but I'm guessing the 'brains' behind this one wasn't on site for the job, else they'd have jumped on the guy who thought it a clever idea to pop some bubbly..

Moreover, whilst offloading a handful of 'hot' cases of first growths would not be difficult, this sort of quantity would be very much harder, especially if you're not the sort of person who normally has this sort of stock to sell.

So did someone with specialist knowledge of the site brief some lowlife and leave them to get on with it, in the hope of getting a cut later? - or did they brief some lowlife in the hope of being able to blame an awkward stock discrepancy on the break-in..?

I like Tom’s theory: wine stolen ages ago, and replaced with rubbish. Expensive wine sold. Now the rubbish has been stolen to trigger an insurance payout. Cunning.

But what about an alternative: this is nothing to do with the wine. At a recent Champagne tasting an empty glass was pocketed. An empty glass used by the person whom Brains wants framed. Of course, a separate event would have been arranged to keep the victim alibi-free — it is possible to imagine such event featuring a hired damsel.

I fear it may be less glamourous than that..

Staffer has critical financial problem - spirits out a few cases of first growths to sort the issue. Subsequently switches labels to keep the stock loss concealed, but realises can't keep the secret forever. Arranges break-in to clear the decks..

Or someone broke into the warehouse and stole some expensive wine?

All I am sure of is that, like Owen, I now have no cases of Chateau Lafite 1962.

At BBR's homepage, you can take a virtual tour of the warehouse:
http://www.bbr.com/virtual-tour-warehouse
I guess the thieves were quite grateful for this planning tool.

Or, as has happened a number of times in recent years, it is as I mentioned..."Stolen to order". It is not uncommon for organized high end thieves to steal wine AFTER it has been ordered. That is, the thieves have a list of what they want and a buyer already in place to take it. Offloading it later is quite easy as it's already got a buyer in place. Generally speaking, someone isn't stealing this much high end wine first, then going to go look for a buyer later.

Andy Velebil wrote:Or, as has happened a number of times in recent years, it is as I mentioned..."Stolen to order". It is not uncommon for organized high end thieves to steal wine AFTER it has been ordered. That is, the thieves have a list of what they want and a buyer already in place to take it. Offloading it later is quite easy as it's already got a buyer in place. Generally speaking, someone isn't stealing this much high end wine first, then going to go look for a buyer later.

I still think that most of the time somebody sees an opportunity to nick something and does so. But with quite specialist tea-leafery like this Andy's idea may well prove accurate, not that we will ever find out.