WINE CRIME is on the rise. It usually takes the form of robbery or fraud and, whereas the former is obvious, the latter is not so easy to detect. This has less to do with deficient police skills or insensitive palates and more to do with the madness that has overtaken the fine wine world whereby, for the fabulously rich at least, wine collecting has overtaken wine consumption as the main point of wine production.

A wine heist at one of Spain’s most highly rated Michelin-starred hotel-restaurants, Atrio, in Càrceres, in the Extremadura region, reported recently in The Daily Telegraph, illustrates the point perfectly. The hotel holds the country’s greatest wine collection, the pride of which is – or was – a collection of precious Château d’Yquem, the world’s most expensive pudding wine. Its centrepiece was an 1806 bottle worth £295,000. This gem and 15 bottles from other starred years, along with 30 bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the world’s most famous Burgundy, worth a total of £1.25 million, were stealthily secreted in holdalls and spirited away, allegedly, by two Swiss “guests”.