A vineyard in Canada is offering five cases of wine to anyone who can solve the mystery of who stole nearly a half-ton of grapes the day they were set to be harvested.
The theft was discovered at Vignoble et Coteau Rougemont vineyard in Quebec on Thursday, when workers arrived to pick the vineyard’s last Vidal blanc grapes of the season. Michel Robert, the owner of the operation, told CNN that the number of grapes stolen was enough to produce some 325 bottles of wine, valued at about $3,800.
“In the morning, my workers went into the parcel and started removing the nets, and when they got into the row, they realized that for half of the row, the nets were already taken off,” Robert recounted. “When they looked at it, they saw there were no more grapes on the row.”
The winery said in a Facebook post that police arrived at the scene that morning and a report into the missing wine ingredients was filed. The winery also offered a boozy reward of five cases of its signature product to “anyone who will help us pin down these unscrupulous thieves.”
Roberts said he believes that an all-terrain vehicle, a trailer, and garbage bags may have been used to pull off the fruity caper. He noted that the thief or thieves left behind a trash bag at the scene of the crime. He expressed the frustration his team felt when they realized what had happened.
“People were surprised, shocked, frustrated, angry — all the adjectives, you know,” Robert said. “It’s the work of six months. You work on it for six months, you take care of the vines, you prune, you spray, you do all kinds of treatment on it so you can collect the fruit. And six months later, you’re ready to pick it up, and it’s gone.”
He speculated that rather than a rival vineyard, the suspect could have been an amateur winemaker who wanted to try their hand at making wine in their “garage or basement.”
The theft is unusual but not unheard of. Firefly Hill Vineyards, a Virginia-based winery, was forced to suspend its operations in 2018 after more than 2 tons of grapes worth some $25,000 were pilfered from the vineyard just hours before they were set to be harvested.
