THE PINOT THIEF

SHE’S BEEN DUBBED the “bold blonde bandit”. The crime? The successful theft of over twenty cases of pricey Pinot Noir from the World of Pinot Noir’s (WOPN) grand tasting on March 4 at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. Taking a page from the Ocean’s 11 playbook, the thief wheeled her score out of the tasting – as the gathered winemakers looked on. Dressed in a black and white, the woman took two luggage racks into the grand ballroom, loaded up more than 2O cases of expensive wine likely worth more than $1O,OOO, and covered them with linens. She then moved quickly toward the exit, met two men in a truck waiting in the valet line, and took off with the stolen loot.

The woman strategically gathered the wine as the tasting event shut down for the evening, with winemakers thinking she was a Bacara representative and Bacara people believing she was with a winery. When a few of the winemakers suspected that something was amiss, the thief simply bluffed her way out. Due to surveillance footage, Leslie Mead Renaud, who is president of the WOPN event, identified the alleged culprit as a schoolteacher who lives in Las Vegas. Renaud has since presented all of the evidence – including name, birth date, phone number, address, footage of the crime, and corroborating information, such as eyewitnesses and social media posts of the woman wearing the same outfit at a different event – to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

Turns out she’s not just a random wine lover. One of the wineries involved recognized her as one of their club members who was suspected of recently stealing a bottle of wine. Like any good heist story, there’s one more twist: she might just get away with it. Renaud said the Sheriff’s Office was weighing whether to pursue an arrest, which would involve extradition from Nevada. “They didn’t leave me with a great feeling that they would pursue this,” said Renaud, as the department gives greater priority to crimes against people over property crimes.