Thieves stole about 30,000 bottles of some of Italy’s most prized wines worth an estimated 5 million euros ($5.8 million) from a winery in Tuscany, in what the producer described Friday as the country’s largest wine theft on record.
The theft targeted Marchesi Antinori’s facility near Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, where a group of at least seven thieves on Saturday night made off with bottles of some of Italy’s most sought-after wines, including Solaia, Tignanello and Guado al Tasso. The theft was discovered Monday, but the company made it public on Friday to avoid interfering with the investigation.
Chief Executive Renzo Cotarella said the thieves disabled the winery’s alarm system and surveillance cameras before entering with two large trucks. Using the company’s forklifts, they loaded the vehicles with wine and fled during the night.
That’s the traditional way, yes, and some people, in particular people that produce mostly for themselves and in small quantities, still use it. But any winer maker that wants to put product on any wider market beyond family and friends needs scale to process tons of grapes in the shortest time possible. And that requires machinery.
Very true, and the yeast added might be better than foot yeast. It might be.
I live in wine country and people that avoid chemicals to make their wine don’t rely on yeasts to ferment. They rely on the wild yeasts the bunches naturally carry and use fermentation time and room temperature to control the process.
And people wash and always washed their feet before stomping the grapes. They did some nasty things but dirty feet wasn’t one.
Sure, but washing feet does not mean there is no yeast there. But yes, most of the yeast is from the environment, which is why there was always the emphasis on year and region and all that.
A lot of areas don’t have good natural yeasts, like mine, in the great lakes region. You can get lucky, but most likely you will get some weak brew.
We have a licqueur that is essentially a nearly non fermented wine to which is added a very high alcohol content spirit, itself made by distilling the peels and stalks of the grapes after fermentation, to kill off the yeast.
It’s a nice drink to have with some roasted chestnuts.
So, it doesn’t require a strong ferment to get a nice drink. But I understand your point. Not every place in the world is good for making wine straighforward and it was a good thing we collectively learned how to select and preserve yeast strains.
I make maple syrup wine, I make maple syrup.
It is interesting, no two batches are the same, and it’s a remarkably complex flavour. I also make cheap sugar ferments most of the time because I’m not made out of money, that I distill.
I would enjoy very much to try maple syrup one day but it is not an easy product to find here. And the wine seems like an interesting concept.
Ever considered doing fruit based mashes and distill it? It’s more involved but the hard licquour is more prone to be drank over a longer period of time than basic fermented drinks.
But I’ve seen people doing “wine” from nearly any fruit, using water infused with the fuit and a lot of sugar.
I like fruit so much I feel it’s a waste to distill it, unless the fruit doesn’t taste good. I made like 30 gallons of hard cider last year, (tried to, ten or more are vinegar,) but it’s a weak ferment.
Of northern fruits, only grape (which doesn’t hardly even grow this far north here,) and apple have enough sugar to ferment well on their own.
But I saw a cool video of like, hungarians or something making a liqueur out of wild cherries, on reddit before I got chased off there.
I’ve got a Youtube channel for you!
I think that man could ferment old socks and shoes and the result would be drinkable. If only once…
I tried hard cider once, using leftovers of wine fermentation, and the thing became undrinkable. Above 20% by liter. Too strong. I had to toss it out.