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$20K bottle of wine recovered after theft

E-mail|Link|Comments () August 3, 2009 01:47 PM

By Jack Nicas, Globe Correspondent

Boston police have recovered a $20,000 bottle of wine in South Boston, four days after it was stolen from a Hopkinton liquor store.

Chateau Mouton Rothschild

“They said they had it under lock and key,” said the bottle's owner, Clelland Johnson. “I’m quite elated.”

Boston Police recovered the rare 1945 bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild through an anonymous tipster, who recognized a suspect from surveillance footage of the incident at Hopkinton Wine & Spirits. The tipster contacted an intermediary, who was able to recover the bottle from the suspect, Hopkinton police said.

Hopkinton police detective Scott van Raalten retrieved the bottle in Boston today.

On Wednesday, a woman distracted the liquor store's clerk while two men swiped the 64-year-old Chateau Mouton Rothschild along with three other bottles worth a total of $2,050, said Hopkinton Police Chief Thomas Irvin. The thieves seemed to know exactly what they were doing, Johnson said.

"They went straight to the cooler," Johnson said. "They were out in three minutes."

Surveillance footage of the theft, which shows the woman talking to the clerk while her two accomplices stuff two bottles each in their pants, was essential in the recovery of the Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Irvin said. The three other bottles remain missing.

The Chateau Mouton Rothschild is valued at nearly $800 per ounce and could have been sold discreetly online, at an upscale auction house, or at other businesses that buy expensive wine, Johnson said.

“They could take it to a retail store," he speculated, "and say they found it in their attic.”

Irvin said Hopkinton police are following several leads, but no arrests have been made.