The oldest restaurant in Paris, La Tour D'Argent has experienced a theft from its magnificent wine cellar to the tune of 1.3 million pounds. Their cellar has a combined value of 21 million pounds.
The 25,000 most valuable bottles, all priced over £250 and over are stored in a special area on the first floor of the cellar which has walls reinforced with battleship grade metal. A routine stock check last month revealed that 83 bottles of some of their rarest wines had gone missing.
The thieves, referred to as the ‘premier crew’ could have taken the wines any time over the last four years. The restaurant went through extensive renovations before it reopened last summer and could have happened then. A list of the missing wines includes a number of red Burgundys from the prestigious Domaine de la Romanee – Conti regarded as some of the world’s greatest wines.
La Tour D’Argent was the inspiration for the 2007 hit film Ratatouille, the story of a young rodent who becomes a chef at a famous eatery in Paris. Celebs who have dined and enjoyed vintage wine at La Tour include Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Angeline Jolie, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Charlie Chaplin, Dustin Hoffman and Prince. Some may have ordered the restaurant’s signature dish Canard au sang or bloody duck which was the invention of the 19th century owner Frederic Delair.
So if you are in a dark lit bar off the champs de elysee and a stranger approaches, taking out a bottle of Grand Cru Petrus from his dingy duffle bag offering you it for thirty quid, you will know where it probably came from.
