In what must be inspiring news to every potential new crime novelist, Penfolds is again ensnared by rumour, intrigue and unlawful activity. In fact, when crime and wine are concerned, I now think of Penfolds every time! Grange has been heisted from wine stores, it has been (very badly) counterfeited, and now it seems there’s every possibility it has been insider-traded, but literally so. South Australian police today arrested two Southcorp employees of the company’s Penfolds Nuriootpa winery in relation to the suspected theft of at least a million dollars’ worth of premium red wine since March 2000. The as yet unidentified 39 year-old male and 30 year-old female in question will to appear in the Tanunda Magistrates Court in June. Southcorp has also suspended their employment pending an internal investigation and has decided to keep Mum on the matter. Who could blame them? To this time, Nuriootpa police have recovered $250,000 worth of wine, while South Australian and Victorian police have seized another $50,000 worth of the stolen goods. While Grange is perhaps the most obvious target of this theft, Southcorp began the practice of laser-etching the vintage year, name of the wine and a sequentially-numbered five-digit alphanumeric code between the label and shoulder of all bottles of its flagship red from the 1995 vintage onwards, making it as easy as possible to trace stolen bottles of this wine. Despite the fact that the Magill Estate, the Bin 707, the St Henri, the RWT and the Yattarna Chardonnay are now also protected the same way, rumour is that RWT is the principal subject of the heist, but news is sure to leak out on that subject. Watch this space.
