The famous House of Whiskey shop in Paris was robbed this past weekend when two thieves broke in and stole $749,000 worth of whiskey.
That’s 69 bottles total. Nice :)
The Daily Beast reports that the thieves just casually broke into the shop last Sunday morning when nobody was around but security cameras were working. They reportedly went straight for a rare Japanese whiskey called the Karuizawa 1960, also known to collectors as “The Squirrel.”
According to the House of Whiskey, there are only 41 bottles of this whiskey in the world. In 2015 a bottle of this sold for a record-breaking $118,500 at auction, though the French press calculated its worth at $230,000 a bottle. The Daily Beast writes that the shop “is distributing a photograph of the Karuizawa 1960 bottle as if it were a missing person or a stolen masterpiece, hoping that will make it harder to fence.”
This kind of booze thievery is apparently pretty common in France. Earlier this year a group of thieves stole 300 bottles or so of rare wine from a private Paris cellar via the catacombs. Five men also tried to break into a private cellar of 40,000 bottles, known as the famous “Louvre of wine,” this past June. And seven metric tons of grapes were also stolen from a Bordeaux vineyard in the middle of the night this year as well.
French people, make sure to keep your alcohol close.