| Behind the electronic gates and freshly clipped hedges of a home in an exclusive cul-de-sac, the thieves worked in the dead of night, ignoring watches, laptops etc.to cart away the ultimate prize: 450 bottles of wine, including a rare, $11,000 1959 magnum from Château Pétrus in Bordeaux, reports International Herald Tribune.
Thus began what the police in this affluent Silicon Valley town 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 that 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."
Theft and wine make a heady pairing, especially in Atherton, California- the sought-after nesting place of venture capitalists and magnates like Charles Schwab, 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. The cellars appear on blueprints for most new homes, labeled "storage" for security reasons.
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 Fahrenheit (about 13 Celsius). The police have not identified the victim. There was no sign of forced entry, indicating the possibility of an inside job, said Detective Sergeant Joseph Wade, who is in charge of the investigation. The house is gated, and a code and a key would have been needed to enter the house, he said.
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