Europe 1 with AFP 5:04 p.m., February 22, 2024

A 56-year-old man, employee of a Burgundy wine house, is suspected of having stolen more than 7,000 bottles, worth half a million euros, from his employers.

He was arrested and placed under judicial supervision until his trial, scheduled for August 6.

The employee of a Burgundy wine house is suspected of having stolen from his employers more than 7,000 bottles, worth half a million euros, we learned Thursday from the public prosecutor's office, a flight which ranks among the most important in the history of wine.

This 56-year-old man was arrested and placed under judicial supervision until his trial, scheduled for August 6, Dijon prosecutor Olivier Caracotch told AFP.

More than 500,000 euros in damage

The man is suspected of the theft of "thousands of bottles over several years" from his employers, wine houses in the prestigious wine-growing region of Beaune (Côte d'Or), according to the same source.

Nearly 7,000 bottles were found at his home, for damage estimated at more than 500,000 euros, the prosecutor said.

According to the local daily Le Bien Public, which revealed the affair, the employee was filmed by a surveillance camera stealing four bottles.

After a complaint from his employer, he was arrested and his house was searched.

The investigators then discovered several cellars and thousands of bottles, among which the employee's boss found his own, as well as those of other wine houses where the accused worked.

The latter would have accumulated his loot over around fifteen years, also lining the walls of another cellar at his mother's house.

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Bottles priced at over 1,000 euros

The prices of bottles, sometimes great wines like the prestigious Vosne-Romanée, can exceed 1,000 euros, according to the local daily.

However, "no element indicates in the procedure that he resold a single bottle", indicates the prosecutor. 

This theft ranks among the largest of its kind, on a par with the theft, in 2019 from the home of a Bordeaux broker, of around a hundred cases of Petrus, Mouton-Rothschild as well as a bottle of the very prestigious Romanée- Conti, a Burgundy that prides itself on being the most expensive wine in the world.

The damage was also half a million euros.

This was followed by the burglary in 2007 of a warehouse in the Bordeaux suburbs for an amount estimated at 400,000 euros.

In Burgundy, one of the largest thefts remains that of more than 3,000 bottles from a Vosne-Romanée wine estate, stolen twice: on December 31, 2018 and then on March 17, 2019. The total damage was estimated at 179,000 euros.