Sabotage wipes out six years’ work, $15M in wine

ROME – Saboteurs broke into the cellars at a Tuscan vineyard and sent an estimated $15.9 million worth of one of Italy’s most celebrated red wines gurgling down the drain.

The mystery night raiders turned on the taps of Case Basse winery’s giant wooden casks in which the wine was maturing, and let more than 62,000 litres of prized Brunello di Montalcino pour out.

Some 80,000 bottles of wine were lost, each of which can sell for at least $220. The saboteurs did no other damage to the estate’s “cantina,” nor did they steal anything, suggesting that it was more an act of spite than random vandalism.

The raid wiped out the last six vintages of the vineyard in the hills of southern Tuscany, from 2007 to 2012. Case Basse is a small but highly acclaimed producer of Brunello di Montalcino, making around 10,000 bottles a year.

The wine, produced from sangiovese grapes, has to be matured in barrels for at least four years before it can be sold under the Brunello di Montalcino name, so the vineyard will have nothing to sell until 2016 at the earliest.

Gianfranco Soldera, the estate owner who was an insurance broker in Milan before buying the vineyard in 1972, said he had no idea who might have been behind the raid in the early hours of Monday. His family described it as “a mafia-style act,” but did not identify possible culprits, whether crime organizations or individuals.

“We cannot come to terms with what happened,” Mauro Soldera, his son, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“We’ve never been involved in controversy and we’ve never received threats. We’ve suffered a serious blow, not just in economic terms. But we will not give up, the estate will survive.”

Brunello di Montalcino has been marred by scandal in recent years after it was found that some producers were “cutting” their wine with other grape varieties, such as Merlot.

In 2008 investigators confiscated more than half a million bottles from one prominent vintner, alleging that he could not possibly have made that much wine purely from sangiovese grapes.

The Solderas have said they could quadruple their production if they were less rigorous in their standards, and their criticism of less scrupulous producers may have antagonized rivals. The sabotage is being investigated by police.