Thieves Stole Domaine de la Romanée-Conti From L’Auberge Provençale


Move over, Louvre heist. There’s a new luxe robbery in town.

Two thieves just snagged several bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, some of the most coveted wine in the world, at Virginia’s L’Auberge Provençale last week. In an perhaps unexpected move, the inn and fine-dining spot in Shenandoah Valley confirmed the details of the theft in a YouTube video.

The burglars certainly had a solid plan. The duo, one male and one female, donned wigs and pretended to be event planners who were looking to check out the restaurant and the cellar for a prestigious celebration. The team at L’Auberge Provençale then gave the thieves a tour of the cellar; once there, the pair sprang into action, replacing the rare Domaine de la Romanée-Conti with fake screw-cap bottles to hide their larceny.

The staff at L’Auberge Provençale, luckily, realized the plot rather quickly. Employees and a guest at the locale chased after the duo as they ran toward their getaway car, and the struggle that followed led the female suspect to be detained. The male thief, however, managed to speed off in his New Jersey rental car and is still currently at large. In some positive news, two bottles that the duo had nabbed, a Grand Échézeaux and an Échézeaux, have since been recovered, though the rest of the lot is still missing.

“It’s not just about money,” L’Auberge Provençale’s sommelier Christian Borel said in a press release. “To acquire a bottle like that, you have to have built a relationship over the years. These bottles were the crown jewels of our cellar.”

It’s easy to see why the duo wanted to make off with offerings from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Bottles from the famed Burgundy estate (which sell for well into the thousands on the regular—a bottle of DRC 2017 is currently the most expensive bottle on Le Bernardin’s wine list, going for $35,000) pop onto the black market or are sold through private-collector channels quite often. So, even though each bottle has a serial number, it can be difficult to recover any stolen goods from the brand. They also often sell for lofty figures at auction: A bottle of 1971 La Tâche sold for a cool $150,000 on the block last year. It may be that the duo was planning on cashing the bottles in for a similarly pretty penny.





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