Fine wines targeted in 2 bold S.F. thefts
Russian Hill shops hit in breakins apparently aimed at vintages from Italy
Russian Hill may have an Italophile wine thief on the loose, say the owners of wine shops that have recently been targeted.
Habibi Bar on Hyde Street says that late last Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, 65 bottles of wine worth a total of $2,253.43 were stolen — mostly Barolo and Barbaresco, two types of highend wine from northern Italy. Nearby, Italianwine shop Biondivino had an attempted breakin around 5 a.m. on March 18. Security footage shows a masked man prying open Biondivino’s outer door with a crowbar, then taking a blowtorch to a window.
Ultimately, the thief didn’t make it inside the Green Street shop, but the owner, Ceri Smith, is pretty sure she knows what he was after. Biondivino is known for its unique selection of soughtafter Italian bottles.
“Guy’s got good taste,” Smith said.
The two incidents come several months after another Russian Hill wine heist. Last May, two people broke into William Cross Wine Merchants on Polk Street and absconded with “a sizable amount” of wine, said owner Steven Sherman, who declined to say exactly how many bottles were taken. Italian wines were targeted there, too — all of the shop’s Brunello was gone, along with much of its Barolo inventory. Many bottles of expensive
California Cabernet Sauvignons, Champagne and Burgundy also were taken, said Sherman.
Property crimes in San Francisco are on the rise: Since Jan. 1, there have been 1,959 burglaries in the city, which represents a 49.5% increase over the same period in 2020, according to San Francisco Police Department data. Throughout the pandemic, food and wine businesses have frequently been the victims of these crimes, with a slew of breakins at restaurants.
But the Russian Hill incidents do not seem like runofthemill petty theft. At both Habibi Bar and William Cross, cash, laptops, iPads and other valuables were left untouched; only wine was taken. Wine is not exactly easy to purloin: It’s heavy (a typical bottle is about 3 pounds) and fragile. In order to grab the bottles from William Cross, two men filled up large camping backpacks, left, then came back and filled a recycling bin with more bottles, according to Sherman’s security camera footage.
Police reports confirming the incidents were not immediately available.
Whoever swiped the bottles had to have at least a basic knowledge of highend wine.
“How do you know what to steal?” said Smith. “How do you know the difference between Fabio Gea Barbaresco and TwoBuck Chuck?”
The most coveted bottles of Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello can cost hundreds of dollars at retail, though much of what was stolen from Habibi Bar — like that Fabio Gea Barbaresco, which goes for $125 — was closer to the $80$150 range.
Yet the dollar value doesn’t tell the full story. Some of the bottles pilfered from Habibi Bar are rare and allocated, meaning the shop gets only a limited amount.
“Some of those Barolos we’ll never get again,” said coowner Essam Kardosh.
These aren’t the Bay Area’s first or most costly fine wine heists. In 2014, two men pilfered more than $500,000 worth of wine from the French Laundry in Yountville. They specifically went after Domaine de la RomaneeConti, a Burgundy producer whose Pinot Noirs can cost up to $10,000 a bottle. The men eventually pleaded guilty to the thefts and admitted to being part of conspiracies to steal other highvalue wines from Alexander’s Steakhouse in Cupertino and Fine Wines International in San Francisco.
Presumably, wine burglars would need a plan for selling stolen bottles, which would require an understanding of the secondary wine market. Kardosh said that he would be monitoring online auction sites like WineBid to see if the bottles pop up, but he acknowledged it was possible that the thieves might not be that sophisticated.
“Maybe they’ll just sell them out of the trunk of their car for pennies on the dollar,” he speculated.
Sherman had an alternate theory.
“If they had an inside link to restaurants, that would make it possible to sell the wine,” he said. “It would be easy for a restaurant to put the wines on their list.”
Insurance compensated Sherman for the value of the stolen wine and the damage to the shop’s facade. He’s since installed bars on the windows and new motiondetector sensors. He said his alarm went off when the theft occurred but he was not notified; he learned of the crime hours later when a neighbor called him to say his windows were smashed.
Habibi Bar does not have insurance to offset the losses, and is working with its landlord to fix the crowbar damage to its door. Biondivino has made thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs to its door and windows. Smith wants to install a metal gate outside the shop’s front door, but said that would require a complicated permit. She’s still assessing the feasibility.