Oulu: 400 wine bottles stolen from restaurant Alfred's cellar – losses of €7,000–8,000
Wine stocks at the restaurant Alfred in Oulu were subject to a theft of 400 bottles of wine. Police noticed the stolen bottles on the streets before the restaurant owner was aware of the theft.
Wine went missing in Oulu city centre from the cellar – suspected perpetrator still unknown
Google News FI — Crime (fi) reported that the wine storage at restaurant Alfred in Oulu has been broken into in the city centre. A total of 400 wine bottles with a value of approximately €7,000–8,000 according to restaurant owner Juha Eskelinen were taken from the storage.
The theft began to reveal itself to Eskelinen on Friday when a message arrived in a shared WhatsApp group of Oulu restaurant owners: men had been seen on the streets fighting over expensive wine bottles.
– A query came in asking whether any restaurant was missing a lot of wine, since here the locals are fighting over wine bottles in the city centre, Eskelinen recounts.
Police had already noticed the situation earlier. Investigation leader, detective superintendent Jarno Väliaho from Oulu police, says that patrols had already observed expensive wine bottles in the hands of people known to police as early as last Monday of the previous week.
– We started finding suspiciously expensive wine bottles from so-called regular customers, who on average do not buy their own wines, Väliaho says.
According to Eskelinen, the storage is located at street level in Oulu city centre, and staff visit it approximately once a week. Eyewitnesses residing in the building have told staff that the storage door was ajar. Eskelinen suspects that the bottles were not taken all at once, but wine was fetched from the storage over the course of a week, box by box.
The stolen wines are restaurant-branded house wines: Alfred's Pinot Noir red wine and Gustave's Riesling. Gustave's wines belong to Eskelinen's own restaurant in Rovaniemi, whose storage was in the same premises. The retail price of one bottle at the restaurant is €45.
Väliaho estimates that the wines ended up with people who consume a considerable amount and were partially sold on.
– The wines went to people who have quite substantial consumption. They have probably also been sold on. A bottle stock gets drunk rather quickly when there are several people drinking, he states.
Eskelinen does not believe the wines will be recovered, nor could they be used in the restaurant if they were. The restaurants' wine selection will not suffer, however, as the entire storage was not emptied. The storage space can no longer be used by the company because, according to Eskelinen, it is "marked".
– It is quite possible that the theft is somehow related to that building. Perhaps it was seen that wine shipments are delivered there by lorry, Eskelinen surmises.
Police have conducted house searches in the case, but the perpetrator has not yet been found. Väliaho urges reporting observations to the emergency number if anyone notices an unusual quantity of full wine bottles.
Source: Google News FI — Crime (fi)