[MSN] In an Enclave of Serious Wine Lovers, a Mesmerizing Theft

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February 1, 2007
Atherton Journal
In an Enclave of Serious Wine Lovers, a Mesmerizing Theft
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

ATHERTON, Calif. — It was perhaps the most Californian of crimes. Behind the
electronic gates and freshly clipped hedges of an exclusive cul-de-sac, the
thieves worked in the dead of night, ignoring watches, laptops and other
ho-hum booty to cart away the ultimate prize: 450 bottles of wine, including
a rare $11,000 1959 magnum from the Château Pétrus in Bordeaux, France.

Thus began what the police in this Silicon Valley town, one of the country’s
most affluent ZIP codes, refer to as “the big wine caper” — a $100,000
theft, still under investigation, whose audacity has inspired Agatha
Christie-like fascination among sophisticated oenophiles in the Bay Area.

“It’s a worrying thing,” said Ken Chalmers, the assistant manager at
Beltramo’s, a local wine purveyor who sells hard-to-come-by vintages to
customers with pebbled driveways and lavender-lined walks. “If you drink a
bottle of a ’61 Bordeaux every five years and somebody swipes it, you’re not
going to be happy. You can’t replace it. Wine is a very personal thing.”

Like a sauvignon blanc with an ash-covered chèvre, theft and wine make a
heady pairing, especially in Atherton, the sought-after nesting place of
venture capitalists and magnates like Charles Schwab, of the wealth
management company, and Tom Proulx, the founder of the software company
Intuit. Wine cellars are a fixture of daily life here, a common amenity
along with home theaters, fitness centers and his-and-her offices.

At some point between Dec. 28 and Jan. 4, while the homeowner was on
vacation, the police said, the thief or thieves made their way to the
basement, where the collection, much of it distinguished Bordeaux, was
stored at an optimal 55 degrees. The police have not identified the victim.
There was no sign of forced entry, indicating the possibility of an inside
job, said Detective Sgt. Joseph C. Wade, who is in charge of the
investigation. The house is gated, and a code and a key would have been
needed to enter it, he said.

The perpetrator had a discerning palate, leaving behind lesser vintages. The
collection included a magnum of 1959 Château Beychevelle and a magnum of
2002 Jones Family cabernet, a Napa Valley cult wine.

The mystery of the theft on Fair Oaks Lane has captivated a region obsessed
with the vine, a place where The San Francisco Chronicle’s weekly Wine
section is required reading.

“The properties in Atherton are so large that it’s possible to imagine no
one would notice,” said Stephen J. Bachmann, the chief executive of Vinfolio
Inc., an online store and consultant service for private wine collectors,
who also writes a blog. “It’s an interesting question of whether they had
advanced knowledge of what was in the cellar. A lot of people don’t think of
wine as an asset that needs to be protected. But they should.”

In many ways, Bordeaux has assumed the status of liquid gold.

“Like chocolate was to the Aztecs, wine has become the ultimate currency,”
said Daphne Derven, an independent scholar on food and wine based in Eugene,
Ore. “It appears that the thieves, whoever they were, had more faith in the
stability and accruing value of the ultimate bottle of wine than the
American dollar.”

The crime is perhaps understandable given record increases in wine prices at
auction, said Thomas Matthews, the editor of Wine Spectator, which recently
reported on counterfeiting, in which labels are falsified. .

In 2005, major auction houses in the United States and abroad sold $166
million worth of wine, Mr. Matthews said. Last year, sales rose to $240
million, with numerous world records, like the 50 cases of 1982
Mouton-Rothschild that sold for $1.05 million at Sotheby’s.

Although theft of private wine collections is uncommon, Mr. Matthews said
theft at wine warehouses in the United States and Europe was on the rise.
With yet-to-be released vintages, like a 2005 Château Latour, fetching $800
a bottle, “that puts a lot of upward pressure on older wines,” he said. “In
wine, the supply is finite. Rising prices are the result.”

The crime’s swirling reach has extended even to New York, with the list of
stolen wines making the rounds of retailers and distributors.

“It’s going to be difficult to track,” said John Kapon, the auction director
at Acker Merrall & Condit in New York. “The sad truth is, it should be
relatively easy for whoever stole it to sell this wine without anyone being
able to figure it out.”

Unlike missing art and antiquities, hot wine has no official registry.
“Something like an Amber alert would be very useful,” said George Derbalian,
the president of Atherton Wine Imports, an importer of Burgundy and
Bordeaux.

Theresa Lawless, a manager for the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, in
Novato, Calif., one of several major American insurers of private wine
collections, said loss of wine was typically a result of fire or power
failures, not theft. “But this will definitely make people think twice,” Ms.
Lawless said.

Wine cellar designers are increasingly installing fingerprint and voice
recognition systems and crisscrossing laser beams that trigger alarms (à la
the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones), said Tod
Ban, a wine cellar designer in Atlanta who recently completed such a cellar
for a private collector with 27,000 bottles.

Evan L. Goldenberg, an architect and owner of Design Build Consultants in
Greenwich, Conn., said radio-frequency labels that allow the tracking of
individual bottles were on the horizon. In Atherton, where cameras are
embedded in oaks, the theft has caused deep unease.

“You’ve got to be careful,” said a resident, speaking through her intercom.
“There’s been a lot of trouble around here.”

The case has lingering overtones for Sergeant Wade, who also was working on
a case in nearby East Palo Alto, a city that has long wrestled with high
crime rates.

“An 18-year-old girl was shot point-blank in the head and I received no
calls about it,” he said. “The wine theft? A gazillion. It kind of shows you
where people’s values lie.”

http://www.nytimes.com/