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Some very brazen thieves recently stole 12,000 bottles of rare craft whiskey worth nearly $1 million from the warehouse of Westland Distillery in Burlington, Washington. Even more shocking, they were able to do so right in front of distillery employees during regular business hours and no one realized it.
The thieves walked away with three different whiskeys: Westland’s flagship single malt; Watchpost – a new release; and 3,000 bottles of Westland Garryana 10th Edition, which took more than a decade to create and sells for at least $150 a bottle.
How could someone steal 12,000 bottles of whiskey?
So how does one steal 12,000 bottles of whiskey in broad daylight during business hours? According to The Associated Press, a freight truck arrived at Westland Distillery’s warehouse in Burlington on the afternoon of July 31. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The driver of the truck presented paperwork to the warehouse showing that he was there to pick up a shipment of the Westland single malt, Watchpost, and Garryana whiskies for delivery to somewhere in New Jersey. The bottles never made it to New Jersey.
Jason Moore, the managing director of the distillery, said it took them a week to figure out that they had been duped by a “sophisticated, fraudulent carrier scheme.” Unfortunately, the 3,000 stolen bottles of Westland Garryana, which is aged in casks made from the Quercus garryana oak tree, was 40 percent of their stock.
“The providence of the Garryana is important because it’s their first 10-year-old whiskey,” Mark Gillespie, the host of the WhiskyCast podcast, told The Associated Press. “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.”
Gillespie also said it isn’t going to be easy for the thieves to sell the stolen whiskey “because what they took was so rare that everybody knows about it.” He cited similar thefts that have taken place in Scotland, adding, the stolen whiskey “usually ends up in Russia.”