Thieves Stripped A Vineyard Of Grapes The Night Before Harvest

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When workers arrived at Canada's Vignoble Coteau Rougemont vineyard on Thursday, ready to pick the last grapes of the season, they were in for a shock.

On removing the nets from their carefully cultivated vines, they discovered thieves had hit the site overnight -- making off with half a tonne of grapes, equivalent to more than 300 bottles of wine.

"In the morning, my workers went into the parcel, and started removing the nets, and when they got into the row, they realized that for half of the row, the nets were already taken off," said Michel Robert, owner of the family-run vineyard in Rougemont, Quebec.

"When they looked at it, they saw there were no more grapes on the row," he said.

The thieves made off with half a tonne of Vidal blanc grapes -- enough for 325 bottles of white wine, retailing at $5,000 Canadian dollars (around US$3,800) in total, Robert said.

Robert said the vineyard has filed a police report -- but he doesn't think think the grapes could have been stolen by another wine producer. Instead, he has his own suspicions about who stole the bounty.

"It's probably somebody that wanted to make wine in his garage or basement," he said, adding: "I would say an amateur wine maker that decided to test his skills with our grapes."

By Amy Woodyatt
10-26-2020
Source and complete article by: msn.com