Tens of Millions Won Worth of Wine Vanished Without a Trace... 2 Billion Won Stolen

The Seine River as seen from La Tour d'Argent, with Notre-Dame Cathedral visible in the distance. [Photo by La Tour d'Argent official website]

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At a famous French restaurant with a history of over 400 years, 83 bottles of premium wine have gone missing. The value exceeds 2 billion won.

On the 1st, French media including Le Parisien reported that vintage products worth 1.5 million euros (2.1 billion won) disappeared without any signs of break-in at one of France's most famous restaurants. The incident occurred at La Tour d’Argent, meaning "The Silver Tower," located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Established in 1582, this restaurant has a history of 442 years and is situated along the Seine River, offering views of Notre-Dame Cathedral on the ?le de la Cit?, a small island in the Seine. It is especially famous for having the largest wine collection in the world, with as many as 300,000 bottles. From 1933 to 1996, it held the longest record of maintaining three Michelin stars for 63 years.

La Tour d'Argent Interior [Photo by La Tour d'Argent Official Website]

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The theft was discovered when a restaurant employee found missing wine during a routine inventory check in the wine cellar and reported it to the police. Among the missing wines was the globally renowned Roman?e-Conti, with individual bottles valued at tens of millions of won. The restaurant was closed from April 2022 to September 2023 for extensive remodeling and reopened in the latter half of last year. Both the media and the restaurant estimate that the theft occurred sometime between January 2020, before the remodeling, and recently. There have been ongoing wine theft incidents in the past as well. Although the police are investigating, the perpetrator of this incident has not yet been identified.

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