FIVE THINGS ABOUT A WINE RAID

1 CELLAR STAR

Five men have been jailed for up to five years over a botched operation to break into “the world’s greatest wine cellar,” whose French owner they sequestered and beat in a bid to get the keys to his trove of priceless vintages. Michel-Jack Chasseuil, 75, has described his 40,000- bottle collection as “the Louvre of wine.”

2 A WONDER

The retired aeronautical engineer has spent much of his life scouring auction rooms in search of rare and prestigious bottles, buying them up and storing them in a highly secure cellar near his home in the village of La Chapelle- Baton, western France. Experts say the wine trove could be worth anywhere from $75 million to 10 times that amount. Prince Albert II of Monaco has called the cellar one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.”

3 BANDITS

In June 2014, alerted to the priceless bounty, thieves armed with a Kalashnikov forced their way into Chasseuil’s home. The five, aged from 25 to 38, subjected him to a terrifying twohour ordeal, threatening him with a screwdriver and a butcher’s knife. The pensioner told them it was impossible to break in as the key was lying in a bank safe. The wine is held in three separate rooms in an underground bunker he built and which is accessed via a series of armoured doors, gates and narrow tunnels. The intruders made off with around eight crates of “second- class” wine.

4 JAILED

The five were handed sentences ranging from 18 months to five years. A sixth accused was acquitted. Chasseuil said that he bore “no hatred” toward the thieves. “I forgive but I don’t excuse what they have done.”

5 PRIZED

Among the most prized wines: A 1735 Hunt’s port; an 1811 Chateau d’Yquem; an 1811 Maison de l’Empereur champagne produced for Napoleon; Seventeen of Tsar Nicholas II’s 61- bottle collection of Lacryma Christi from Crimea and one of the first bottles of Louis XIII Remy Martin, dated 1900.