Grapes of wrath: Moment £2million worth of luxury wine goes down the drain when hooded vandal releases 13,000 gallon tank of booze over factory floor in Spain
The wasteful crime is not only bad news for the winemaker, Jose Moro, but also for lovers of the beverage worldwide, as one of his brand's entire vintages was lost.
The footage shows the suspect running up to one of the giant wine tanks and opening it, causing streams of the pricey booze to gush out onto the floor.
The CCTV images were filmed at the Cepa 21 winery in Castrillo de Duero, in Valladolid, Spain, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Comment: Footage:
Local media reported that the attack left 60,000 litres of wine on the floor after three vats in total were opened - enough to fill around 80,000 bottles.
The winery is owned by Jose Moro, a highly regarded winemaker who sells his product all over the world.
After the attacker opened the first vat which saw 40,000 litres of the beverage pour out, they moved onto another two vats, both of which were empty.
Moro has filed a complaint with the Civil Guard over the matter.
The financial hit is said to be significant for Moro.
He said that the person who carried out the attack knew what they were doing and knew how to operate a wine vat.
'It's a case of doing harm for the sake of doing harm, by someone who can't be very balanced, hasn't got much common sense and is acting out of hatred,' he told Spanish public television TVE.
'Everything indicates the person knew where they were,' he added.
Comment: They may have 'known where they were and what they were doing', but they didn't know 2 vats were empty.
The investigation is ongoing and no one has yet been caught.
Surprisingly, the 60,000 litre loss of wine is not the largest ever wine-related disaster.
Back in 2005, an arsonist set fire to a huge warehouse resulting in the loss of six million bottles of wine worth a staggering £130m (in today's money).
The arsonist, Mark Anderson, was arrested two years later, having allegedly started the fire to cover up embezzlement.
If wine is rare enough, even the loss of one bottle can be costly.
According to Wine Investment, the most expensive bottle ever dropped was by Manhattan wine merchant William Sokolin had New York's high society aghast back in 1989 when he accidentally dropped a bottle of 1787 Chateau Margaux at a black-tie event in Bordeux.
The bottle was worth over £1m (in today's money) and was discovered behind a cellar wall in Paris in 1985.
It is thought to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson.
Somehow, the bottle didn't shatter - but the wine poured out nonetheless, resulting in what People magazine called 'the world's most expensive puddle'.
Comment: Considering the surge in sabotage incidents of late, it's notable that this one has footage (or at least footage that has been released). Whether this is directly related to the other industrial sabotage occurring or, as per the speculation, this is more to do with a rivalry (no doubt exacerbated by the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions in Europe), remains to be seen. One also recalls the rise in wildfires found they have been caused by arsonists.
Although, indeed, it's also true that during former times of collapse, cattle theft, adulteration, price gouging,, fraudulent insurance claims, and so forth, spike: