Thieves steal $1M worth in craft whiskey from Washington distillery
Thieves who made off with 12,000 bottles of craft whiskey in a rare U.S. liquor heist this summer did more than just snag nearly $1 million worth of product -- they also spirited away nearly half the stock of a single malt distillers had worked for more than a decade to make.
Now the Skagit Valley Sheriff’s Office is investigating, and whiskey aficionados are wondering if — and where — the coveted bottles of Westland Distillery’s first 10-year Garryana whiskey might turn up.
The bottles disappeared July 31, when someone in a freight truck showed up at Westland Distillery’s warehouse in Burlington, Washington, holding the paperwork that purportedly gave them the right to pick up a shipment of Westland single malt, Watchpost blended, and Garryana whiskies bound for New Jersey.
But the bottles never arrived at their intended destination, and the “sophisticated, fraudulent carrier scheme” was discovered a week later, said Jason Moore, the managing director of the Seattle-based distillery.
The 10th anniversary edition bottles of Garryana are irreplaceable, said Moore.
“This is an unfortunate and pretty extraordinary situation,” said Moore.
The Skagit County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a phone message left by The Associated Press.
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It could be difficult to sell the stolen goods, said Mark Gillespie, the host of the WhiskyCast podcast who has published more than 3,800 tasting notes for different whiskey varieties.
“It’s going to be really hard for whoever took this to actually get this onto the market, because what they took was so rare that everybody knows about it,” Gillespie said. “We see these thefts occasionally in Scotland, where thieves will steal a trailer full of whiskey — and it usually ends up in Russia.”
But getting 12,000 bottles out of the U.S. could be difficult because the bottles are rare and recognizable, and flipping them in the U.S. may be tough because of the nation’s three-tier system for alcohol sales. Distilleries generally have to sell liquor to distributors or wholesalers, who then sell to retailers and restaurants and bars. Selling alcohol on the secondary market — such as when individuals buy up popular bottles and then resell them for a profit — is generally illegal.
That’s not true in much of Europe, where auction houses and other businesses specialize in secondary market sales.
“The providence of the Garryana is important because it’s their first 10-year-old whiskey,” Gillespie said. “Basically, age statements state how old the whiskey is, and in this country you have a lot of craft distilleries that aren’t quite 10 years old. So for a craft distillery to be able to release a 10-year-old is an accomplishment.”