Lavinia wine theft & ridiculous wines

The first time I stepped in Lavinia in Madrid, I thought, “Wow, what a selection. It’d suck if someone walked out with some of it.” Turns out someone must have heard me as thieves made off with 100,000€ of wine recently only to be caught after they sold it and the police caught the buyer. The thing is, this robbery didn’t take a getaway truck to pull it off nor even a forklift, just a case box as they only took 12 bottles of wine and two of Cognac.

Here of course is the problem with what’s happened to our wacky world of wine these days in that some wines are just valued too damn high. There’s no reason to pay 30,000€ for some bottle of Burgundy or Cognac (which is what was stolen) when it has pretty much the same cost of production as a wine that’s 1/1000th its price. Sure, these are excellent wines and if the image is correct that Montrachet in the photo is supposedly one of the finest white wines in the world but again, paying this is ludicrous, even if you have the money. Well okay, if you have a billionaire’s yacht that you need to cellar up then maybe it’s understandable, but only then.

But it’s things like these in the wine world that are making a laughing stock of Bordeaux en primeur tastings and everything else for those of us who just want to enjoy a little fermented grape juice from time to time without having to choose between paying the rent or drinky drinky.