Gary's Wine Theft

In our local paper, The Bernardsville News which covers a couple small communities in central jersey, they reported a couple high end wine theft jobs. This last report was at Garys in Bernardsville on Sept 9 basically at closing time. I would post a link but the paper does not appear to be online - I assume that it’s straight from the police blotter so not a copyright issue. Anyway, according to the police, A white male asked for access to the locked room where rare and expensive wine is stored. While the suspect was in the room, the police said the store employee was distracted by a call. The suspect later approached tha cashier to buy a bottle of wine from the regular priced shelves but then said that he had left his cash in the car and he left the bottle at the counter, exited the store and did not return. The employee thought the exit suspicious and conducted an inventory of the wine room and found that two bottles of wine had been stolen, a 2010 Chateau Mouton Rothschild valued at $999 and a Harlan Estate Meritage valued at $859. Poilce hope to identify the suspect who was caught on video tape.

I’m very upset. I did not realize that there was a high end wine room there that I should have been checking out. Ok. I’m not in that price point but one can dream right? I guess this is a cautionary tale for anyone who wears work out clothes to their local wine store… Instead of whatever that guy was wearing!

Thanks for posting that, Colleen. You think maybe the guy was stocking up for the next Berserkerfest?

Actually, never heard of this wine store, not so far from us (I’m in Princeton most of the year), and they have interesting older Bdx, etc. Have to look into it, so glad for the heads up.

Not that uncommon. We learned our lesson the hard way as did my brother-in-law. There are times I think the thieves do it for sport and not the money. There are many that work alone and many who work as a team and even some gypsies.

Hopefully they have a decent video/security system that will produce a usable picture.

Gary’s is pretty well-known and he has a couple of locations so I’m surprised someone at the store was naive enough to leave an unknown customer in the cool room alone. They should look at the videos to see who else was in the store because someone had to know which employee to call for. And Colleen - it’s summer and the guy probably wasn’t wearing a heavy overcoat. Next time you go in wear cargo pants just in case you have the opportunity to get into the cool room!

Was just in there a couple months ago–first time back east in years. Nice store, very good selection. Wish it was there back in the day.

When I worked in a wine shop, we had an interesting theft.

I came in at noon, the store having been open since 9:00am. I went straight to the walk-in cooler to grab a Coke. A strange light caught the corner of my eye. I turned around to discover a gaping hole in the brick wall.

Someone had knocked out the bricks exactly where the cooler was, and stole all the domestic beer. No Champagne, wine, or wheels of cheese were missing. When I asked the owner and fellow co-workers about it, no one had noticed yet!

Surprising how easy it is to lift items alone, or even with a team of 2-3. But that is truly just the tip of the iceberg… (Survived 7 years ITB - retail…)

I was in retail back in the 80’s and quite often would see the small band of gypsies work.

Update n this one

Rule #1 for getaway vehicles, no personalized license plates!

That’s amazing! He’s almost too young to drink and they give him access to the climate controlled room with the expensive wines. I guess there’s some consolation for them that they aren’t alone in this but still…

Thanks for the update!

Deluca is wanted in a string of pricey wine thefts throughout New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island

Wonder what he’s planning to do with them Better keep an eye on Commerce Corner, people!

Not making this kind of assumption earned some local retailers tens of thousands of dollars of my business over the past 20 years, as they treated me with respect and as a serious customer even though I looked 16 or so when I first walked in the door. There are others that have already lost 20 years of possible business and there is nothing they can do to get it in the future because they assumed that I wasn’t in the market for serious wines and either ignored me or condescended to me.

Why? I am not at all sympathetic to this idiot. Gary is a local guy who now has 3 really nice wine stores in our area. It’s not like some desperate man stealing food from Walmart to feed his family lol!

Can’t agree. There’s no honor here. Robin-Hood worthy largesse isn’t even a possibility. His victims aren’t fat cats. Hiding a bottle under your shirt and then physically wrangling it away from a shop employee…zero tact and zero class. Buyers willing to shell out $1k+ per bottle are much larger players compared to the small-time sellers catering to them.

If there were creative ingenuity, some panache and his victim was a giant heart-less entity…say PLCB, then I might be “kinda rooting for him”.

RT

Sherri and Rich, pay no mind to the man with 3 posts who is using a false name. Shaun Mondavi was an SNL character.

Back in the late eighties we had this guy that would come into the shop every week…same m.o…brought us a pound of coffee from the coffee roaster where he said he “worked”, and bought a couple of mid priced CA cabs or BDX ($30-$40). We had imported a couple of cases of 1970 Latour and put one out on the floor, and I was waiting for the day when I could buy one. Every week, the inventory was a bottle or two lower and I thought I’d better buy one soon before it sold out. I always assumed that someone came in on my days off and bought some bottles.

Then one day I noticed that a bottle was missing from when I checked it earlier, and we only had two or three customers in the store that day (we were mostly an importer). When I brought it up to the owners they didn’t believe it and me and my co-worker were rewarded with a “search” before we left for home that day.

Finally convinced that something was happening, we deduced that it could only be our “favorite” customer. A further examination of inventory revealed missing bottles of Batard Montrachet from Leflaive and some high end Dujacs as well as most of the case of the Latour.

On his next visit, after he left we confronted him and he gave up the bottle of Batard he had just pilfered acting all indignant. He never visited the store again, but it taught us a valuable lesson.

According to NBC Connecticut, investigators believe Deluca stole a $4,800 bottle of 1990 Chateau Petrus from the Mystic Marriott’s Octagon Restaurant last week.

It would be justice if the guy does time for stealing a Rudy bottle.

While passing through Sonoma yesterday I stopped at Taylor and Nortons for the first time to take a look around. The front door was ajar. When I came in I heard a welcome from behind the counter out of view. I perused the offerings, noticing the gentleman behind the counter/wall on his computer who never looked up at me, making a couple laps of the store. When I was ready to leave I felt real weird about not having any interaction with the fellow and didn’t want to just walk out without saying something. I said “Thanks” and proceeded out the open door. I would imagine he had some type of video surveillance going on but he had $600 bottles of wine within a half step of the door. For some reason the place gave me the creeps.

It is Halloween after all!