Nearly 60,000 litres of premium red wine worth around 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million) were lost at a Spanish winery after someone broke into the vats over the weekend, the winery reported on Tuesday.
Security camera footage published by the famed Cepa 21 winery in the Ribera del Duero region of central Spain showed a guy in a hoodie going from one enormous vat to another and turning on the taps, causing wine to spill over the floor.
The event occurred at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to the vineyard, with the amount of high-end wine lost potentially filling 80,000 bottles.
Jose Moro, the establishment’s manager, informed Spanish public media TVE that no products were stolen during the break-in, indicating that the intruder’s main goal was to destroy it.
“It’s a case of doing harm for the sake of doing harm, by someone who can’t be very balanced, hasn’t got much common sense and is acting out of hatred,” he was quoted as saying by the station.
Moro stated that the intruder would have needed to know how to use the system to access the vats.
“Everything indicates the person knew where they were,” he went on to say.
The winery filed a complaint with police, who confirmed to AFP that they have opened an investigation.