The €5 Million Antinori Heist: What Was Taken, and What It Means for Solaia and Tignanello

Over the first weekend of October, a gang drove two lorries into the Marchesi Antinori logistics hub at Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, and left with around 30,000 bottles of some of Tuscany's most sought-after wine. The estimated value is about €5 million. Italian press, including Corriere della Sera, are calling it the largest wine theft ever recorded in the country. Many of the wines taken are ones our clients drink and collect, so here is what we know, what it is likely to mean, and what to look out for.

What happened

According to reports first published by the Financial Times and followed by Il Sole 24 Ore, Sky TG24 and others, the raid took place overnight at the weekend; most reports put it on the night of Sunday 4 October. Staff discovered it when they arrived for work on Monday morning.

Investigators believe at least seven people were involved. They disabled the alarm and the cameras covering the inside and the perimeter of the warehouse, brought in two large lorries and, by several accounts, loaded them using the winery's own forklifts. The Carabinieri in Cortona are investigating. At the time of writing no arrests have been reported and nothing has been recovered.

What was taken

This was not a random haul. The thieves went for three of the most recognisable names in Italian wine:

• Solaia, the Cabernet-led flagship from the Tignanello estate in Chianti Classico.
• Tignanello, the wine that more or less invented the "Super Tuscan" more than fifty years ago.
• Guado al Tasso, the family's Bolgheri Superiore from the Tuscan coast.

Antinori's chief executive, Renzo Cotarella, told Il Sole 24 Ore that the split was roughly 10,000 to 12,000 bottles of Solaia, a similar number of Tignanello, and the rest in other labels, including magnums and large formats. Several reports say the stolen stock was from the recent 2023 vintage. Retail prices quoted range from around €120 a bottle for Tignanello to €300 and more for Solaia.

"Undoubtedly professional thieves, but also wine connoisseurs," was Cotarella's verdict, judging by what they chose. To Corriere della Sera he described the gang as "very well prepared, perhaps the same one that has hit other cellars in Italy", adding that a theft of this size and value had never happened in Italy before.

Part of a pattern

It is the second major raid on a top Italian producer in a matter of weeks. In mid-September, around 3,000 bottles of Barolo were stolen from Conterno Fantino in Monforte d'Alba, Piedmont, valued at €300,000 to €400,000. The previous Italian record, per Wanted in Rome, was a theft of around 2,000 bottles worth €750,000 from a warehouse in Cervia in 2017. The Antinori haul is several times larger than both combined.

Fine wine is attractive to organised crime for the same reasons it appeals to collectors: it is valuable, portable and easy to sell quietly abroad. Commentators in Italy have suggested this may have been a theft to order, with the bottles destined for parallel markets outside the country. That is speculation for now, not a finding of the investigation.

Will there be shortages?

For most of what was taken, probably not in a way you will notice, but one wine stands out.

• Tignanello is made in relatively generous quantities, around 350,000 bottles in an average year. Losing ten or twelve thousand is a blow to Antinori, but it is a small share of a vintage spread across the world.
• Solaia is a different story. Production is only some 50,000 to 70,000 bottles a year, depending on the source and the vintage. If 10,000 to 12,000 bottles of Solaia 2023 have gone, that could be something like a sixth to a fifth of the release. Allocations were already tight, and we would not be surprised to see 2023 harder to find and firmer in price over the coming year.
• Guado al Tasso appears to have been taken in smaller numbers, though no exact figure has been given.

Older vintages already in the market are not affected by the theft itself, although they tend to move in sympathy when a new release becomes scarce. If a particular vintage of Solaia matters to you, for a cellar or for a specific occasion on board, it is worth securing it sooner rather than later.

Buying safely

Thirty thousand bottles of famous wine cannot easily be sold in one go, and Antinori has warned buyers worldwide to be cautious of offers from outside official channels. A few sensible rules:

• Be wary of a bargain. Recent-vintage Solaia or Tignanello offered well below the going rate, in quantity, from an unfamiliar seller, deserves questions.
• Check the strip. Antinori's premium bottles carry an anti-counterfeiting strip that can be scanned with a smartphone and checked on the winery's website. The company has confirmed the stolen bottles all carry it.
• Know your supplier. Ask where the wine came from. In Italy, buying stolen goods knowingly is a criminal offence, and a cellar is only as good as its provenance.

Everything we sell comes through established, traceable trade channels, and we are always happy to tell you where a bottle came from.

Our view

Antinori has been making wine in Tuscany since 1385, and the family is now in its twenty-sixth generation. A loss like this will not change that, and Cotarella has said he still hopes to recover at least part of the haul. As he put it to the Financial Times, two lorries "cannot simply disappear", and Tuscany's roads are full of cameras. We hope he is right.

In the meantime, if you would like Solaia, Tignanello or Guado al Tasso for your cellar, a villa or the boat, you can browse the Marchesi Antinori wines we carry, or simply ask us. We will tell you honestly what is available and what is likely to become scarce.

Sources

• Il Sole 24 Ore — Wine: a theft worth 5 million at the Antinori cellars in Cortona
• Wanted in Rome — 30,000 bottles of Italian wine worth €5 million stolen in record heist
• Scatti di Gusto — Maxi furto alla Marchesi Antinori
• Sky TG24 — Furto da 5 milioni alla cantina Marchesi Antinori
• Florence Daily News — Thieves steal €5 million worth of Antinori wine in Tuscany

Header photo: the spiral staircase at Antinori nel Chianti Classico, the family's winery at Bargino (the theft took place at the company's separate logistics hub in Cortona). Photo by Repuli, Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Figures are as reported on 9 October 2026 and differ slightly between outlets; we will update this article as the investigation develops.