Search underway for missing Hunter Valley wine collections worth more than $5m

[rens]

Dozens of prestigious wine collections with a value of more than $5 million have gone missing from the New South Wales Hunter region.

Police said the company holding the wine, Wine Investment Services, went into receivership in 2013 and while other assets were seized, the wine was not surrendered to liquidators.

Detectives from the State Crime Command's Fraud and Cybercrime squad were investigating the disappearance of the valuable collections and believe the wine may have been stolen.

They want to speak to anyone who may have bought or been approached to buy collectable or vintage wines.

Some of those labels include Penfolds Grange, Torbreck, Henschke and Chris Ringland/Three Rivers.

The crime command investigation was launched in March 2016 after a search by owners of the collections, liquidators and local police failed to find the wines entrusted to Wine Investment Services.

A storage unit in Newcastle was raided in March and officers found electronic storage devices to various companies.

Police are appealing to the public for information.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-30/w ... sw/7555916

Somehow I don't think this stuff would be sold on a street corner.
Surely it would be easy enough to drip feed it through the auction houses over a lengthy period of time. It doesn't go off or depreciate in value like a stolen car.

[JamieBahrain]

Perhaps even abroad? I'm seeing plenty of Aussie investment wines retail in Hong Kong and through retail offers prior to shipment. The unknown stuff given away and frankly a lot of these investment wines mediocre anyways !

[marsalla]

Insurance value may well be better than the actual value.

[dave vino]

$5M at an average of say $100 a bottle is about 50,000 bottles or about 4000 cases or about 74 Pallets...Which is a serious amount of stock to move and store. Not something you can shove down the front of your pants and walk nonchalantly out the door with

[Diddy]

Was interesting to read the wine may not have even existed to begin with!

[phillisc]

$5M at an average of say $100 a bottle is about 50,000 bottles or about 4000 cases or about 74 Pallets...Which is a serious amount of stock to move and store. Not something you can shove down the front of your pants and walk nonchalantly out the door with

Classic Dave

ROFL

Cheers
Craig

[rens]

$5M at an average of say $100 a bottle is about 50,000 bottles or about 4000 cases or about 74 Pallets...Which is a serious amount of stock to move and store. Not something you can shove down the front of your pants and walk nonchalantly out the door with

After I posted I heard an interview on ABC radio with one of the detectives. He said it was about 30,000 bottles.
After he said that, my trickle through the auction houses looked more like a flood, or a very patient thief.

[mjs]

$5M at an average of say $100 a bottle is about 50,000 bottles or about 4000 cases or about 74 Pallets...Which is a serious amount of stock to move and store. Not something you can shove down the front of your pants and walk nonchalantly out the door with

Classic Dave

ROFL

Cheers
Craig

mental image of a couple of bottles stuffed down the front of Dave's pants

[Michael McNally]

Not something you can shove down the front of your pants and walk nonchalantly out the door with

Ahhhh the memories.......

Cheers

Michael

[markc]

This is kind of strange considering that in November - December a certain drap coloured auction house ran several auctions under instructions from the receivers Mcgrath Nicol in the administration of wine investment services which contained a lot of the labels mentioned. Maybe someone got a little over zealous with clearing out the cellar. Word around town was there were several collections worth between $30-50K now missing?
Cheers Mark.

[RobK]

Ouch.

[mjs]

Think I'm with Diddy on this one ... smells to me as if the wine never existed in the first place