Paris police investigate $1.6 million wine theft from famous restaurant
More than 80 bottles of rare wine disappeared from the cellar of La Tour d'Argent, a renowned restaurant in Paris, according to a complaint filed last week, prompting investigators to find who was responsible.
The stolen wine had an estimated value of 1.5 million euros, the Paris prosecutor's spokeswoman said in a statement. The third department of the Paris Judicial Police is overseeing the investigation.
A sommelier noticed the theft of the 83 bottles, which could have occurred between 2020 and 2024, during a routine inventory check of the approximately 300,000 bottles of wine in the restaurant's basement. Le Parisien reports this. There was no evidence of forced entry into the 442-year-old restaurant, the newspaper reported, adding that the establishment was closed for renovations between spring 2022 and fall 2023.
Wine thefts of this magnitude are unusual, but not unheard of. In 2011, robbers disabled security alarms and security cameras when they stole 400 cases of wine worth 1 million British pounds (about $1.6 million at the time) from a warehouse in London. Ten years later, the owners of a hotel and restaurant in Cáceres, Spain, reported that 45 bottles of wine worth 1.6 million euros (about $1.9 million in 2021) had disappeared from their cellar, including a bottle worth 350,000 euros (about $414,000 in the basement). time). A court in Spain last year sentenced a former Mexican beauty queen and her partner to four and a half years in prison for the theft. according to El Pais.
The wine stolen from La Tour d'Argent included bottles from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, one of the most expensive wine estates in the world, Le Parisien reported.
A spokeswoman for La Tour d'Argent declined to comment on the theft.
The first version of La Tour d'Argent was founded in 1582. It was established as an inn serving the lords of King Henry III and became known as the Hostellerie de la Tour d'Argent, or Silver Tower, after an adjacent castle that was built of silvery stone.
King Henry IV, who came to the throne in 1589 after the assassination of Henry III, became a regular at the restaurant. He introduced the use of the fork, a little-known utensil in France at the time, during a dinner there, according to the restaurant's website.
On July 14, 1789, the restaurant was stormed by revolutionaries who had attacked the Bastille on the other side of the Seine and mistaken the restaurant's coat of arms for that of the royal family.
In 1911, the grandfather of the current owner, André Terrail, bought the restaurant. Shortly afterwards, La Tour d'Argent was closed for several years while he fought in the First World War, then reopened when he returned. The restaurant remained open during World War II, but the owners hid their most prized wine bottles behind a brick wall designed to blend in with other walls, out of sight of the many German customers who frequented the restaurant after the Nazis invaded France .
In 2010, Mr. Terrail took ownership of the third generation of the family La Tour d'Argent, auctioned 18,000 bottles of wine and spirits from the cellar. The sale added more than 1.5 million euros (about $1.6 million) to the restaurant's profits.