One suspect who stole multiple Burgundy bottles from L’Auberge Provençale was sentenced to a year in prison on May 18; her partner remains at large.
Sgt. Mike Bell of the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office returned two of the bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti to L’Auberge Provençale, owned by Celeste Borel and her husband. (Courtesy of L’Auberge Provençale)
One of the perpetrators in the audacious theft of four bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from the restaurant and inn L’Auberge Provençale in Virginia last November will serve a year in prison. Natali Ray, 56, was sentenced to a year in jail May 18. What’s more, all four bottles have been returned to the owners.
In April, two of the missing bottles were anonymously returned to L’Auberge Provençale through the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office. Two other stolen bottles were dropped by the thieves as they tried to escape. Held by the police as evidence, they have now been returned.
Christian Borel, wine director of L’Auberge Provençale, estimates the market value for the returned bottles—a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti 2020 and a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg 2019—is between $28,000 and $30,000. The other bottles stolen, an Échézeaux 2019 and a Grands Échézeaux 2021, bring the total value stolen to between $34,000 and $39,000.
One Suspect Sentenced—the Other on the Run
Ray, a British national, pleaded guilty in the Clarke County Circuit Court in Berryville, Virginia to two counts of grand larceny, two counts of possession of burglary tools and one count of defrauding an innkeeper, in connection with the theft. The court sentenced Ray to 40 years in prison, with all but one year suspended, with 10 years of unsupervised probation upon release.
The second suspect in the case, Serbian national Nikola Krndija, 57, remains at large and a fugitive after escaping the United States to Austria. According to the Washington Post, there are signs that Krndija has been following the case, with his lawyer having contacted the Clarke County Courthouse regarding a virtual hearing.
The robbery took place on November 19, when Ray and Krndija entered L’Auberge Provençale under the guise of evaluating venues for a potential event for a Canadian finance firm. The perpetrators insisted on inspecting the cellar, and while down there with Borel, they stole four bottles of DRC and swapped them with screwcap dummy bottles.
After Borel quickly discovered the fakes, staff chased the perpetrators on foot across the restaurant’s parking lot. Before entering the car, the thieves dropped two bottles in the grass on the side of the road: a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Échézeaux 2019 and a Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands Échézeaux 2021.
Early reports put the number of stolen bottles at six bottles of Domaine de La Romanée-Conti, but in the weeks following the robbery, Borel discovered two bottles were in their off-site storage location.
Bottles Returned
For a restaurant such as L’Auberge Provençale, receiving allocations of Domaine de La Romanée-Conti is a testament to years of hard work building the wine cellar. L’Auberge Provençale has been a Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winner since 2008, with more than 1,200 selections currently on the wine list. When the bottles left the property, Borel and the restaurant’s owners—his parents, Alain and Celeste Borel—did not expect to see them again.
In the weeks preceding the sentencing, the person who had the Romanée-Conti 2020 and the Richebourg 2019 contacted Ray’s eldest son to help return the bottles to the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office.
The problem now, according to Borel, is that L’Auberge can’t sell them. “I have absolutely no idea where these bottles have been: where they’ve been stored or if they’re fakes,” Borel told Wine Spectator, adding that their insurance covered part of the loss. “They’re just dead stock to me. The labels are a little scratched up but the serial numbers match up. I’m not gonna drink it, I don’t know what to do with it.”
The other two bottles—the Échézeaux 2019 and a Grands Échézeaux 2021 thrown into the grass—will also not be sold. According to Borel, those bottles had been kept too long in the evidence room at the sheriff’s office without temperature control or proper storage. “Those are kind of dead too,” said Borel. “I’m not worried about those being tampered with, but now I have four bottles and no idea what to do with them.”
“I think maybe the best thing to do would be just opening one of them with the staff and drinking them,” he said.
Borel says the heist has changed the dynamics of the restaurant—foremost, they no longer offer cellar tours. “It wasn’t a huge show, but we have some really cool gems,” said Borel. “Having something like that in the countryside was just so neat and unique for our area. Las Vegas and Los Angeles have cellars like this, but in Clarke County, Virginia, it was a special little spot.”
Borel notes that guests are coming in specifically asking about the heist. “Everybody coming in just wants to talk about it, which is fine, but we have picked up some new people out of the exposure,” said Borel. “I guess they’ve figured if we have a good wine list to get robbed like that, that they should probably check out the restaurant.”
Source: Wine Spectator
By Julia Larson
