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Dim-witted thieves dump €1.1m empty vodka bottle
A €1.1 million diamond-encrusted bottle of vodka stolen from a bar in Copenhagen has been found dumped on a building site after thieves drained its contents and left behind the bottle, perhaps not realising its value.
The bottle of Russo-Baltique vodka, believed to be one of the most expensive in the world, was on loan to Café 33, situated in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen, when it was stolen in the early hours of Tuesday (2 January).
It was one of 1,200 different vodka bottles on display at the bar, owned by Brian Ingberg, as reported by The Daily Mail.
The bottle of vodka contains three kilograms of gold and the same quantity of silver and is adorned with a circular patch of leather from a 1912 Monte Carlo rally car.
Its cap is shaped like a a Russian imperial eagle and is encrusted with diamonds, with its owner placing its value at 8 million kroner (£960,000).
The bottle, made by the Dartz Factory in Latvia, is thought to have garnered interest after its appearance in the Netflix series House of Cards, when it was presented to the US president, played by Kevin Spacey, by the Russian president, played by Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen.
This week, the bottle was found empty on a construction site, with the thieves seemingly unaware that the true value of their theft was the bottle itself, not its contents.
“Unfortunately, it is empty. Somebody who works at the construction site found it,” Ingberg told Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet.
“It is the bottle that was valuable. We can refill it with vodka in Russia.”
How do thieves that, “were reportedly in possession of either a real or copied key to the bar” and, “They then took just one bottle, even though there are 1,200 bottles in the collection.” not understand the value of what they had just stolen? I think to label them as dim witted is somewhat shortsighted or just plain erroneous. Other factors had to be in play for them to abandon the empty bottle in a constructions site.
I guess this is all just good fortune for the vodka brand, the bar owner and the PR agencies working on behalf of each interested party. Hope the police didn’t expend too much energy on this Clouseau’esque headline-grabbing caper.
Hi Patrick and the DB team,
I’d be interested to know how much checking you did on this story to find out whether it really was a ‘theft’, or merely a PR stunt designed to hit the headlines 2 weeks in a row?
It reminds me of the Sunday Sport headline about the WW2 bomber found on the moon. The following week, the headline was ‘WW2 Bomber disappears from moon!’
I appreciate that it seems like a ‘story’, but the fact that a vodka can be ‘worth’ €1 Million sounds like a load of old b***ocks to me…. and running with it only serves to feed the b***ocks-generating machine.
Would love to hear your opinion!
Thanks
Justin