Diablo Magazine, December 2004

"If finding great deals on vino is a crime, Lafayette's Wine Thieves are guilty"

Posted around a door frame in the back of the Wine Thieves shop in Lafayette are a dozen black-and-white price tags—a Wall of Fame commemorating some of the greatest wine heists of the past five years.  The Wine Thieves biggest score?  Bottles from LeDucq, a prestigious Napa boutique winery, that they sold for $8.99 each.

How they did it is a typical Thieves tale.  When LuDucq's founder died in late 2002, the winery's other owners decided to continue the business, but under a new name.  So the Thieves looted an unsold inventory of nearly 2,000 cases of LeDucq-labeled cabernet, merlot, and Bordeaux-style blends, which had been selling briskly for between $30 and $80 a bottle.  Marked down to at least $600 below the usual per-case price, bottles flew out the door during the next few months.  In all, the Thieves saved LeDucq lovers a cool million bucks.

Robin Hood and his Merry Men had nothing on these guys.

"When we get a deal on something," says Wine Thieves co-owner Bennett Burke, "we don't fatten up the margin.  We just try to walk it through as fast as we can. We don't carry the wines you're 'supposed to have.'  We focus on finding good deals."

That spirit has made the Thieves the suppliers of choice for East Bay wine lovers, who can now shop for bargains not only in Lafayette, but also at the Thieves' recently opened Clayton lair. 

Decades of experience in the food and wine business have given Burke, longtime friend and Wine Thieves' co-founder Jim Meyers, and new partner Rod Santos an uncanny ability to spot distressed wineries, overstocked distributors, and odd lots languishing in warehouses. 

These days, many of the good deals find them; the Thieves have established a reputation as the guys to call when you need to move anything from a few dozen to a few thousand cases of wine that's stuck in the pipeline. 

Three-quarters of the stock sells for less than $10--and with the recent wave of oversupply in the California industry, Meyers says a lot of unusual steals have been showing up in the $12-$16 range.

On a quick tour of the shop, Meyers fills in the stories behind the prices.  Tin Roof sauvignon blanc made the cut simply because it's a good wine at a value price:  "You can find this in a lot of supermarkets," he says, "but not at $7.99."

The Quail Ridge 2000 Napa cabernet sauvignon, a $15 wine at $5.99?  "The winery went bankrupt under Chapter 11," Meyers explains, "and the new owners wanted to clean out the old stock."  A tempranillo from RH Phillips was an experiment with an unusual variety: nice wine, tough market.  It's a $15 value selling for $8.

And the 2002 Robert Talbott Kali Hart Monterey chardonnay, which earned 90 points from Wine Spectator,
was priced at $9.99, simply because the winery needed to make room for the next vintage.

For my own unscientific test of the Thieves' honor, I snag a 1994 Spanish Gran Riserva cabernet-merlot blend (not my everyday wine) selling for $3.99 (not my everday price range.)  The wine had been lost in a corner of some warehouse.  It turned out to be a niftly little bottle--which is why the Thieves have sold several hundred cases.

Meyers turns to a 1999 Napa cabernet from a winery he'd rather not see published.  The bottle sells for
more than $40 at the winery, and retails for $32, but the Thieves charge just $16.99.  "We're not going to advertise this one," he says, "but they gave us a great deal."  A number of the Thieves' suppliers appreciate this under-the-radar treatment—they have a pricing structure to protect.

This reserved air has extended to the Thieves' hideouts--you could almost miss the Lafayette store.  But Wine Thieves has become a destination for those in the know, not only for its bargains, but for its atmosphere: a knowledgeable staff, a busy schedule of tastings and classes, a dash of irreverence, and a willingness to pop an impromptu cork to help a customer make a decision.

With two shops now open and plans for more, the Thieves seem to be beating the system.  Who says crime doesn't pay?