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Vinfamous: Inside the Most Infamous Wine Cellar Heist in Napa Valley

When the French Laundry closed its doors for renovations on Christmas Day in the quiet town of Yountville, thieves saw an opportunity to break in. However, these criminals didn’t go for the cash register at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant. They pried open the wine cellar, stealing $550,000 worth of the world’s most expensive wines. The investigation revealed a crime ring that spread coast to coast.

Listen Now: Vinfamous: Wine Crimes & Scandals


Episode Transcript

Pod People transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a Pod People contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of Pod People’s programming is the audio record.

ASHLEY SMITH, HOST:

Today’s story starts on Christmas in California’s idyllic wine country. Let’s cue up some of the Christmas spirit, shall we? Ah, now that’s more like it.

CARTOON VOICE:

Ho, ho, ho. Look, it’s Santa.

ASHLEY:

It’s December 25th, 2014 in Napa Valley, California. Imagine cool breezes in the 40s flowing through the low rolling hills. The sun sets on the vineyards surrounding the small community of Yountville, population 3,000. Most of the shops in this sleepy town are closed for the holiday. It’s nighttime.

GARRETT SMITH, GUEST:

Everything dies off, generally, in that town after 9:00. It’s a mile-long town, and it’s so sleepy.

ASHLEY:

The famous French Laundry has closed its doors as well. That’s the three-Michelin-starred restaurant owned by Thomas Keller. The stone building has an ivy-covered façade and large windows that offer a glimpse into the elegant interior.

CYNTHIA FREY, GUEST:

The French Laundry was closed for Christmas, and they were scheduled to go offline completely as of, I think, the 27th for renovations. So, I’m sure it was targeted for that reason.

ASHLEY:

There’s normally a long wait for reservations. In fact, it’s been named one of the hardest places to get a table. These thieves didn’t wait for the host to call their names. They let themselves in and they headed straight to the cellar.

CYNTHIA:

The locked dead-bolted door had been pried open.

GARRETT:

It was really a shock.

ASHLEY:

The thieves made it through two sets of doors. One door was made of steel. It was so heavy that it would shake the whole restaurant if you slammed it.

GARRETT:

Like, damn. Like, what the heck did they get?

JIM GORDON, GUEST:

They really targeted the most expensive wines in the cellar.

CYNTHIA:

Some of those bottles today go for 25,000 a piece.

ASHLEY:

Domaine Romanee-Conti, Screaming Eagle, these burglars sought out 110 bottles of the best wines in the cellar, maybe even the best wines on earth. Total value, half a million dollars.

GARRETT:

When those wines got robbed, I’m like, “Shit, man. I put those wines there. Like, those probably have my fingerprints on them.”

ASHLEY:

Restaurant owner Thomas Keller posted a picture of the busted door. He used the hashtag, the Grinch that stole Christmas, how appropriate.

JIM:

So, it sounded to me like it was thought out, planned out, and not just some random break in.

ASHLEY:

Why would anyone take the risk of prying open a steel door for some wine? Well, Vinfamous listeners, I can tell you, they weren’t stocking up for a holiday party. Untangling this crime takes us inside a web that spreads from the backyard of Silicon Valley to Greenville, North Carolina. You’re listening to Vinfamous, a podcast from wine enthusiasts. We uncork tales of envy, greed, and opportunity. I’m your host, Ashley Smith.

JIM:

The property and the old part of the restaurant buildings dates from, like, the 1860s and ’70s. And it was an actual laundry at the time, so it was actually a French laundry.

ASHLEY:

That’s Jim Gordon, wine enthusiast, senior editor, and wine reviewer for Napa and Sonoma counties. He’s lived in Napa for more than 20 years. He loves the magic of the valley.

JIM:

It’s beautiful in the winter. It’s beautiful in the spring when the grapevines are leafing out and they’re bright green. And it’s exciting in the fall and harvest time, and you can smell the wine in the air even as you, like, drive through where they make the wine.

ASHLEY:

This region is known, of course, for the wine and for fine dining. At the center of this hub of viticulture and elevated taste is Thomas Keller’s French Laundry.

JIM:

Everybody gets to take a tour of the kitchen when they come in if they want. They give you a glass of champagne. It’s super expensive, but it’s a super great experience.

ASHLEY:

A table, if you can get one, costs around $350 per person. But if you get a chance to sit down for a meal at the French Laundry, you won’t have any regrets. Anthony Bourdain once called it the, quote, “best restaurant in the world, period.”

JIM:

When Chef Keller took it over in the ’90s, he made it very French, so it kinda fit the name a little better, and quickly got rave reviews from critics nationally, internationally, and was one of the first restaurants in America, I believe, to get the, the three Michelin stars.

ASHLEY:

Not just one, not just two, three Michelin stars. That’s as many as you can get. With three stars, even the smallest details require mastery and precision to execute.

GARRETT:

If you didn’t know the ingredients of a sauce, you would get, like, lit up during lineup. It was like, “Go home, take the, The French Laundry cookbook home and learn it cover to cover.”

ASHLEY:

It’s the slightest of details that separate a three Michelin starred restaurant from the rest of the pack.

GARRETT:

It’s the little flourishes of just, like, I’ll with the right so this guy to my left can see the label. And then I’ll switch hands really easily, pour with my left so the guy on my left, so he can see the label.

ASHLEY:

That’s Garrett Smith.

GARRETT:

And so for six months, I poured exclusively lefthanded whenever possible, and now I think I pour better with my left than my right.

ASHLEY:

Former sommelier at The French Laundry.

GARRETT:

I am professional wine dork. I’ve worked in wine since I was about 18, uh, so that’s 20 years this year. I live in Sonoma County right now, uh, with my wife and my daughter.

ASHLEY:

His spark for the hospitality industry happened by chance while growing up working in restaurants in Connecticut. He moved out to Napa Valley to go to sommelier school when he got his big break.

GARRETT:

One of my classmates said, “Hey, The French Laundry’s looking for an intern.” My boss, my future boss, Dennis Kelly, called me and was like, “We can pay you minimum wage. How soon can you get here?” So, that was kinda the, the start of the journey there.

ASHLEY:

Oh my gosh. So, fresh out of som school, your first gig was at French Laundry.

GARRETT:

It was insane. It was insane.

ASHLEY:

That’s crazy (laughs). After his internship in the cellar, he worked at Redd, also in Yountville. A year later, he became a sommelier at The French Laundry.

GARRETT:

I was actually the first person to ever be rehired at The French Laundry, which is pretty cool. Put that on my gravestone, will you?

ASHLEY:

(laughs). Since then, he’s also been a sommelier at Daniel Boulud’s restaurant, Daniel, and the beverage director at Michelin-starred Sushi Nakazawa.

GARRETT:

When you’re a sommelier, it’s not just, you know, put on a, a pretty suit and tie and try to sell overpriced wine to, to rich people.

ASHLEY:

There’s a lot of unsexy tasks that a sommelier takes on, carrying heavy cases of wine, storing the bottles properly, ordering wines. He takes pride in his work, starting from his job in the cellar of The French Laundry.

GARRETT:

It was restocking that stuff and just kind of being the guy to go, “I’ll go run and get this bottle. I can find it.” 18 seconds is my record from the, from the floor back to the cellar and back to the floor and was like, “I got it. 18 seconds, new record, right, boss?” And my boss is just like, “You’re a crazy human being.”

ASHLEY:

(laughs) He’s like, “Great.”

GARRETT:

Yeah.

ASHLEY:

I love that you love it.

GARRETT:

Yeah. You’re the biggest dork ever.

ASHLEY:

(laughs) So, when Garrett saw a photo of the busted doorframe to the wine cellar, the loss hit close to home.

GARRETT:

I had largely reorganized the cellar during my time there, and I used to think, I thought it was super cool to have all the, all the Screaming Eagle all lined up in one column. And like, all, you know, the DRC was in ascending vintages in columns that were right nearby. So all they had to do if they knew where they were going is walk right in, turn right (whistles). Like, I’ve been there and like, I’ve seen it. And like, TFL specifically, when those wines got robbed, I’m like, “Shit, man. I put those wines there. Like, those probably have my fingerprints on them.”

ASHLEY:

Thomas Keller found out about the theft from a gardener who encountered the damage the morning of December 26th. The famed restaurateur told the Los Angeles Times, “Nobody got hurt. It’s only wine.” He told the newspaper that he was more upset about the fact that theft happened, saying, quote, “At the end of the day, what are you gonna do? You can’t put too much emotion into a bottle of wine,” end quote. Well, the wine industry might not agree with that. The news buzzed around the world of wine.

JIM:

I think it was very surprising. So, it was something people were buzzing about for sure.

GARRETT:

It was really a shock.

ASHLEY:

And the question on everybody’s mind, who did this and…

GARRETT:

Like, damn, like, what the heck did they get?

ASHLEY:

What the heck did they take? 110 bottles were missing in total. They took Screaming Eagle, a California brand that’s considered some of the most highly sought after American wine, and Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, or DRC for short. The DRC bottles would’ve sold for up to 15 grand in 2014 when they were stolen. The thieves also took Clos de la Marechale and Dom Perignon. Here’s wine enthusiast Jim Gordon again.

JIM:

I know a lot of them were the most famous, expensive red burgundy from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, which is known around the world among wine drinkers and collectors. It is, I think, the most expensive and most collectable wine in the world. It’s a number of different wines from the same property in Burgundy in France.

ASHLEY:

Shortly after the break-in, wine publications published a list of what was stolen. Thomas Keller tweeted that, quote, “We are confident that if/when any stolen bottles appear in public, they will immediately raise red flags,” end quote. And he encouraged anyone with info to email the restaurant. After the break-ins, some articles poked at the smart taste of the thieves. Local police initially told reporters that they suspected the thieves were connected to the restaurant industry. There was no security footage, and alarms were not enabled, according to investigators.

JIM:

When I first heard about the burglary, I thought, “I wonder if they went and just sat down and drank a few bottles of it just to, you know, like, if you robbed a lot of cash from the bank, you might just throw it all in the bed in and dive in it.”

ASHLEY:

Were these criminals fed up that they couldn’t afford to wet their palate, or was this theft made to order?

CYNTHIA:

Their wine lists are all published online, and so anyone could actually look and see what those wines were and then, you know, proceed accordingly.

ASHLEY:

Meet Cynthia Frey, assistant United States attorney.

CYNTHIA:

As the investigation continued, we learned that there were a number of other burglaries of high-end wines in the Bay Area.

ASHLEY:

And as soon as investigators realized the thieves or the wine had stepped foot outside of California, it was time to bring in the big guns.

CYNTHIA:

And so it made sense for the FBI to take on the investigation. Normally, what happens when the FBI takes on an investigation, they partner with the United States Attorney’s Office. That’s our, our sort of, our investigative arm. So I partnered with the FBI on this, you know, to work on the investigation.

ASHLEY:

Cynthia and her team were tasked with prosecuting whoever stole those bottles of wine, but first, the FBI had to find them. The first step, figuring out how more than 60 of the stolen bottles ended up across the country in Greenville, North Carolina. More after the break.

After this wine news ricocheted across a tight community of wine buyers, sellers and collectors, everyone’s eyes were wide open for any red flags that would point to these stolen wines. And their eyes were peeled for one piece of information in particular, serial numbers for the most expensive stolen bottles, Domaine Romanee-Conti or DRC, the bottles that would sell for up to $15,000 a pop, or $25,000 today. So essentially, these bottles had a unique ID number that could be traced back to The French Laundry’s cellar.

CYNTHIA:

Shortly after the burglary, The French Laundry issued a press release regarding the burglary and listing all the wines.

ASHLEY:

Cynthia Frey, assistant US attorney, again.

CYNTHIA:

DRCs are such a limited production that they’re serialized, and so they would also publish, uh, not just the, the wine, you know, the type of wine and the year, but also if there was a serial.

ASHLEY:

In January of 2015, so less than a month after the Christmastime break-in, a buyer came forward after recognizing the serial numbers.

CYNTHIA:

We saw approximately more than half maybe, but, uh, around 63 or more bottles of that wine was sold to a North Carolina wine broker, and the company was called Wine Liquidators. And it was sold to them within a couple of days of the burglary.

ASHLEY:

The wines were sold shortly after they were obtained. Then they were shipped to Greenville, North Carolina, nearly 3,000 miles away from Yountville, California.

CYNTHIA:

Given California and the Bay Area is such a wine-centric area, the wines were shipped across country to North Carolina, it would appear, to avoid detection so that they’re not popping up locally, so that somebody might realize, oh gosh, Fine Wines International was burglarized and all of the sudden a bunch of C wines are being sold to a broker in Napa, right?

ASHLEY:

I mean, could you imagine trying to sell 110 bottles of DRC or Screaming Eagle when buyers in Napa Valley are on high alert for stolen bottles from these brands? It would be so suspicious.

CYNTHIA:

So, I guess it was unusual and very smart of The French Laundry to advertise the burglary and list out all the wines that were stolen and the serialized wine, especially mentioned with these DRC wines that they’re serialized, because it in effect made it impossible to resell the wine. So anybody that was looking at buying a, a DRC wine would have to then, you know, look at it against the serialized numbers that were handed out before selling it on. Once the press release hit, the wine industry word of mouth, you know, everyone’s looking for these wines, right? And so the purchaser, the broker, wine broker from North Carolina, learned that they were stolen.

ASHLEY:

The buyer in North Carolina brought the wines to their attorney’s office. The Napa County Sheriff’s Office traveled to pick up the 63 bottles, recovering more than half of the stolen goods and returning them to The French Laundry.

CYNTHIA:

So, it eventually went back to the custody of Napa County Sheriff’s and then back to The French Laundry.

ASHLEY:

These wines are traveling across state lines, which triggers the involvement of the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office. The investigators identified additional burglaries committed by the same individuals. A couple of months before, there was a break-in at Alexander’s Steakhouse in nearby Cupertino, California. 39 wines were stolen. The theft followed a similar pattern as The French Laundry and used similar tools to do the job.

CYNTHIA:

And Alexander’s Steakhouse, that happened a couple months before. In that case, there was a break-in through the front door. There was no alarm that went off. The padlock was cut and then their next set of doors were pried open. The wine case, the glass encasement for the, the wines there was shattered. And there, they stole approximately 29 bottles of wines, and those were a number of DRC wines. There was video footage on that one, but the individuals that stole the wine were wearing masks and gloves and long sleeves. So in that case, about 17 of the bottles were sold to wine liquidators within a couple of days of the burglary.

ASHLEY:

17 of the bottles were sold to the exact same wine broker, Wine Liquidators, as the majority of the wines stolen from The French Laundry. Even earlier, over a year before The French Laundry’s theft, another similar theft happened at Fine Wines International, a huge wine merchant in San Francisco. The break-in happened after midnight.

CYNTHIA:

And in that case, the alarm did go off. It appears later that they found a whole cut, a large opening cut on a, a rolling door that was in the back that had been locked. It was about one-by-two feet, enough for an individual to crawl through. And in that one, they stole about 142 bottles of wine, and the value on that was approximately 290,000. About 80 bottles of that were DRC, and it was interesting to not that apparently, SFPD responded but did not see any, anything that looked awry. They didn’t see the opening.

ASHLEY:

They stole 50 bottles of wine, mostly DRC. A few days later, they sold bottles to Wine Liquidators.

CYNTHIA:

And again, much of it was the DRC. It’s sort of the pattern that we saw on all of these.

ASHLEY:

DRC was a common target of these thefts. The big price tag is appealing for someone looking to sell. You may have heard that a bottle of 1945 DRC broke records when it sold for over $310,000 at auction in 2018. These break-ins happened before that record, but the price has always been high.

CYNTHIA:

Interestingly, to the extent that they understood about the DRC wines, maybe in retrospect, they would’ve targeted wines that weren’t serialized, so they were harder to detect if they were stolen, which was an interesting sort of part of the story in terms of identifying the wines very specifically.

GARRETT:

Overall, you know, I see the, the point in grabbing a bunch of these wines and being like, “Here, you know, I’m gonna sell this stuff.” But like, I wonder at what point they were like, “Shit, like, I, I kinda screwed this one up.” Like, it was smart-ish. Like, they didn’t quite think the whole thing through.

ASHLEY:

After all, it was the serial numbers which allowed investigators to follow the sale of the stolen wines to North Carolina. Ultimately, this is what led investigators to the culprits themselves. Once investigators obtained records from the shipment of wine from California to North Carolina, they could follow the trail of records and receipts to obtain phone numbers. Bingo.

CYNTHIA:

Yes, we were able to get records in terms of the shipping records. We were able to get, uh, records in terms of the bank records for the payment. We were able to get records related to their telephone numbers, right? So once we knew that they were contacting him via telephone, we had their telephone numbers. So we were able to get telephone logs.

ASHLEY:

The investigation pointed toward Alfred Georgis of Mountain View and Davis Kiryakoz of Modesto. So, they both lived within a two-hour driving distance from the targeted restaurants. There was also a third co-conspirator coordinating the laundering scheme, but he died before The French Laundry break-in. He was never indicted, so he was never named by investigators. We won’t be naming him here. Cynthia says investigators discovered communication patterns in the telephone logs between the three men that aligned with the burglaries.

CYNTHIA:

You can see the patterns of the communications between the three just generally, and then at around the time of these burglaries, we were able to get cell site information, which would show, you know, in the different burglaries. So for example, in The French Laundry burglary, we were able to see cell site information for Georgis and Kiryakoz leaving Modesto and San Jose. We believed Kiryakoz was living in the Modesto area and Georgis was living in San Jose and traveling up to Yountville prior to and then after the burglary.

ASHLEY:

So, what could’ve motivated these burglaries? Was it great taste or a great price tag?

CYNTHIA:

I would say, it’s just gonna be speculation, but I think my speculation is it’s really money. It’s at the end of the day, how do you get some quick money? It was clear that they were targeting the most expensive wines to get as much money as possible.

ASHLEY:

The three men worked together to turn a profit.

CYNTHIA:

Mr. Georgis had an extensive criminal record, which indicated, like, he was already doing sort of lower end burglaries, and oftentimes of wines or other alcohol from warehouses and such before he got involved in this. So it did appear that the un-indicted co-conspirator sort of organized it. Georgis kind of knew how to go about doing it, and it seems like they used Kiryakoz to actually effectuate it. And then the payments that were made, some were made to the un-indicted co-conspirator, and some were made directly to Georgis and Kiryakoz. So they were getting money directly from this as well.

The payments that were made were all payments that were made under $10,000, which led to money laundering charges as well. So the obvious charges in this case were the conspiracy and then it’s, you know, the conspiracy charge as it relates to transportation of stolen goods and interstate commerce. And then there was conspiracy to commit mo- money laundering and actual money laundering. So there were a number of charges against them. You know, we sort of started working on the case probably in January 2015 shortly after French Laundry, and then I think we were able to get it indicted, you know, within a year by February of the following year in 2016.

ASHLEY:

Georgis and Kiryakoz were tried separately. They were sentenced in 2018. Georgis was sentenced to 36 months in prison, and Kiryakoz was sentenced to 15 months because he had less of a criminal history.

CYNTHIA:

So they’ve all finished their sentences ’cause this case is long over. So, that’s how that all ended.

ASHLEY:

It’s been more than eight years. Two of the perpetrators have completed their sentences. One of them is dead. So, how has the wine industry changed since these thefts? Is there increased security, fewer private cellar tours, maybe more alarms? In France’s Burgundy region, police pedal through vineyards to safeguard grapes from thieves after a rise in theft in 2016, but wine thefts continue to happen around the world. Recently, a beauty queen and her partner in crime have been making headlines. In 2021, the duo stole 45 bottles of wine from a Spanish hotel and restaurant. The wines were worth an estimated $1.7 million.

Back in Napa Valley, a spokesperson from The French Laundry declined to comment on the thefts for the podcast. The break-ins have made a lasting impact in Garrett Smith, the former French Laundry sommelier. He’s changed how he stores and inspects wines, plus how he trains employees.

GARRETT:

I think it was just a wake-up call for a lot of people. It was just, you know, apoplectic. You know, like, felt violated to a certain extent and was just kind of like a… I think it was more, the mood from afar at least, seemed to be more shock. All that’s preventing me from walking into that was a single key. And apparently, at the Laundry, all you needed was a crowbar. Every restaurant that I’ve worked in or consulted for or been present in, you know, all those fridges get locked every night. The last restaurant that I was running, you know, if you look in through the window, you would see the glow of the wine fridge there. It’s like, man, that, that just looks so tempting, seeing that glow of, like, oh, 58 degrees. Like, that’s a perfect temperature for those wines to be stolen at.

You know, any sommelier that I would be coaching or whatever, it’s definitely something that I would think about, just being like, “Look, like, we’re trusting you to lock up. You need to lock everything. I will provide you a list of everything that you need to lock.” Whether or not everyone thinks like that, if I’d buy that for the restaurant, I feel a certain sense of pride and ownership over it. And I would transmute that to whomever was in my purview or, you know, I was responsible for coaching or employing. You bought that wine, and you, like, had that wine. You, you stored it. You put it away. Like, you used a portion of your intent on that bottle. This belongs here. It’s in a line of vintages. It’s, it’s perfect. I know exactly what that spot is called, and I know when my boss asks me for it, I can do that in 18 seconds ’cause I know exactly where that is (laughs). Um, so again, dork across the board, but like, those are my babies.

ASHLEY:

He’s now an operations coordinator for Thatcher’s Wines and consults and organizes private collections.

GARRETT:

And we bring in an authenticator, you know, one of the women that worked on the Rudy Kurniawan case with the FBI.

ASHLEY:

Hmm. Maureen?

GARRETT:

Uh-huh.

MAUREEN DOWNEY, GUEST:

I’m Maureen Downey. I am the founder and owner of Chai Consulting, which is a wine collection management services firm. And we happen to have a bizarre specialty in authentication.

ASHLEY:

Maureen Downey. We talked with Maureen way back in episode two when we untangled the Rudy Kurniawan scandal. By the way, if you haven’t listened to episode two yet, you can cue it up right after this one. And even at the time, you were one of the only people who were speaking on what was going on and, like, with the fraud and with Rudy.

MAUREEN:

Totally.

ASHLEY:

And that kind of made you a bit of, like, an outsider in your industry.

MAUREEN:

Oh, I’m a pariah to a lot of people. I have to take bodyguards to large tastings. I’ve actually been physically assaulted.

ASHLEY:

Oh my god.

MAUREEN:

But I mean, this is big money, and I’m, I am, you know, I was kind of viewed as the girl pissing on the boys’ campfire. Like, everybody’s having fun, why can’t you just let it go?

ASHLEY:

When you realized, okay, this guy is trying to pull off some fraud here, who did you tell? Like, what is the next step from that?

MAUREEN:

My god, I told everybody that would listen. I mean, it actually got to the point where my family said to me once, my brother said to me once, “Mau, you got to let it go. Like, nobody cares about fake wine.” And I was like, “But it’s wrong, damn it. No!”

ASHLEY:

Some call Maureen the godmother of wine authentication.

MAUREEN:

We have a website called winefraud.com, which is a resource for consumers and professionals to help them to authenticate their own wines. And I’ve actually launched a Web3 company to combat fraud called the Chai Vault, which is blockchain-secured ledgers of authenticity and provenance. So, for about 25 years, I’ve been battling the issue of wine fraud, and, and now hopefully I’ve, I’ve found a solution that’s gonna help producers and consumers.

ASHLEY:

Wine authentication helps the owners make sure their wines are of trustworthy origin, and sommeliers have more information to keep their records straight. Now, new technologies make wines even easier to trace. Remember, the reason these wines were so easily traced to North Carolina is because of the serial numbers. The blockchain presents a unique solution here, traceable records that show every legitimate owner of the wine.

MAUREEN:

A lot of retailers really don’t like me because I’ve made their job more difficult. I don’t trust, I verify. Trust is what got us where we are. You know, “Oh, trust me, I’ve been buying from this guy for 30 years.” I don’t care, you know? Maybe he’s been selling you fakes for 30 years. People do not osmose the ability to authenticate. There are a lot of old-time retailers, especially in the United States, that are selling counterfeit wine, whether they know it or not. And I don’t think that everybody that sells counterfeits does so intentionally, but a lot of people would just prefer the plausible deniability. “Oh, I didn’t know.” You know, when they get caught, “Oh, I didn’t know.”

Anything that we authenticate, we put into the Chai Vault, which gives a, a blockchain-secured ledger that shows that the bottle is authentic, you know, where it was authenticated, by whom. And it also shows any provenance information. And then if somebody sells the bottle, that ledger is updated with the new information. And a buyer’s name can be encrypted so that it can never been seen by anybody else, but the actual sale information isn’t. You know, the, the, the vendor and the date of sale remain in the blockchain for people to see, so they can actually trace the origin of the bottle. And you know, until we start really using a lot of these Web3 applications, we’re going to continue to have to trust. And I don’t trust, I verify.

ASHLEY:

And as for the stolen wines that were returned to The French Laundry, a few bottles were sold with the label Well-Traveled Wine. And we can only imagine that the other bottles have been enjoyed by now.

GARRETT:

I’ve just, I’ve thought about this way too much over the years. I’m just like, “Man, like, they could’ve just had a really great party.”

ASHLEY:

Thanks for listening to Vinfamous, a podcast by Wine Enthusiast. And well, that’s all for this season. I know, I know, I’m super bummed too, but you can listen to our previously aired episodes telling all the tales of greed, envy and murder right now. If you’re a fan, tell a friend about the show. We would love for them to listen. You can post a five-star review and tell us what you liked about season one, and make sure you’re following the show so when there’s something new in the feed, you’ll be the first to see it. And if you want more from Wine Enthusiast, check out the Wine Enthusiast Podcast for an insider’s view on the wine world.

Vinfamous is produced by Wine Enthusiast in partnership with Pod People. Special thanks to our production team, Dara Kapoor, Samantha Sette and the team at Pod People: Anne Feuss, Matt Sav, Aimee Machado, Ashton Carter, Danielle Roth, Shaneez Tyndall, and Carter Wogahn.

(Theme Music Fades Out)