From the Daily Beast, December 29:
The Jacques Selosse champagne brand is one of the most coveted in the world. In an audacious 2013 raid, a group of thieves stole $360,000-worth of it.
As the minute hand ticks toward midnight on New Year’s Eve, people around the world will be poised to ring in 2018, thumbs pressed in popping position against corks and flutes of Champagne tipped toward mouths. With one sip of effervescent bubbles, they will cheers to all of their hopes and dreams for the new (and, please, please be better than 2017) year.
For a lucky—and rich—few, this bubbly New Year’s tradition will come courtesy of Jacques Selosse, a small-scale vigneron whose Champagne is considered by many to be the best in the world. It’s a designation that has garnered the producer something of a cult following, and the coveted bottles now command a similarly prestigious price.
While most of us have come to terms with the fact that we won’t be popping Selosse at the stroke of midnight, a group of thieves decided to take matters into their own hands in 2013 when they broke into the Selosse cellars in Avize, France, and made off with 300 cases of wine, worth around $360,000. The men have never been identified and their misbegotten booty has not yet been found.
On the night of March 21, the season’s wine allocations for the U.S. and Japan were sitting prepped and packed on pallets in the Selosse cellars, ready to be shipped out.I don't know about most coveted, especially after the theft of the labels but the old standbys, a Cristal, a Dom or a Krug are acceptable at pretty much any table anywhere in the world, while a Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill would definitely be topical.
The thieves broke in and helped themselves to the eight pallets containing some 3,700 bottles of cuvée worth half a million dollars. But they didn’t stop there. They also filched 6,000 bottle labels, 12,000 neck labels, and 2,500 wine caps, a troubling discovery that indicated they may have planned to also produce fraudulent bottles to sell....MORE
