Wine Theft in Napa Valley Targets Prized Vintages

Screaming Eagle

The Napa Valley restaurant known as The French Laundry did not have a merry Christmas. Thieves entered the boutique establishment and stole the highest of high-end wines, including Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon and Romanee-Conti. The story became far more public today, with CBS News showing a segment on the caper.

A sfgate.com story about the theft offers more details than the CBS report provided. Here are some details:

• The restaurant was closed when the incident occurred, as was the bakery next door to The French Laundry.
• The robbery took place in broad daylight.
• The thieves used a cart to get the wine to their getaway vehicle.
• The alarm to the wine room was not active during the heist.
• The thieves entered the restaurant through a door that was not actively connected to the restaurant's alarm system. Apparently, the crooks used a primitive crowbar-style entry through the door (that's the one detail CBS did note that was not available elsewhere).

The restaurant let the world know in detail about its losses, probably to diminish the black market for the goods. Whether or not insurance will pay French Laundry and its owner, uber-chef Thomas Keller, partially or fully for the lost items will be an interesting sidebar to the story.

For restaurants holding prestigious wines, the investment is tricky. The bottles typically snooze in the wine cellar for a long time, tying up funds and requiring special care. The possibility of an inside job, perhaps related to a restaurant's need for money, cannot be immediately discounted.

Meanwhile, one wonders what details the police have omitted from the public details of the case. Those details are signatures that only the perps, any prospective clients for their stolen goods, and detectives attempting to apprehend them would know.