It seems that it’s not just the angels who are thirsty for their share of whiskey—criminal enterprises are as well. The latest example of this is last week’s brazen daylight theft of nearly 11,000 bottles of Noble Oak bourbon, which was formerly owned by Macallan parent company Edrington, a haul that is worth about half a million dollars.
Noble Oak was launched by Edrington in 2018 in collaboration with Doug Hall, the co-founder of Brain Brew Custom Whiskey. The bourbon and rye in the bottles are distilled at MGP in Indiana, the source for so many other whiskey brands, aged for at least two years, and then given a secondary maturation—the bourbon is finished in sherry casks, the rye in port barrels. The brand’s mission has been focused on reforestation, so for every bottle purchased it says it will plant a tree. It has committed to planting 1,240,000 trees in total, and is said to be nearing that goal. Edrington announced plans to sell the brand back in 2024 to A21 Wine & Spirits, the operating division of Apogee 21 Holdings, Inc., and the company issued a press release last April that Noble Oak was now officially part of its portfolio.
That brings us to last week’s theft. According to an article in The New York Times, last Friday afternoon the whiskey was stolen from a warehouse in Philadelphia. A truck driver pulled up to the building, showed the staff his paperwork, and 18 palates of whiskey containing 10,800 bottles were loaded onto his rig—which never reached its final destination. According to the Times, Rob Koch, chief operating officer of Apogee 21 Holdings, said that the driver did not have a purchase order, something that the workers at the warehouse somehow missed. He believes that this was a highly coordinated crime, but without a container ship ready to load up the whiskey, it is likely still in the tristate area.
“We are treating this as a serious criminal matter and are fully cooperating with law enforcement authorities,” said a spokesperson for A21 Wine & Spirits in a press release. “The theft involved a significant quantity of premium bourbon from our newly acquired brand, Noble Oak, and appears to have been executed with knowledge of logistics operations and product movement schedules.” The company believes the whiskey will likely show up for sale via unauthorized channels or secondary markets, and is asking for distributors, retailers, and bars to be on the lookout for discounted bottles or online listings of large amounts of Noble Oak for sale.
This is not the only recent example of whiskey theft in recent months. Last summer, a truckload of the Seattle distillery Westland’s whiskey worth about a million dollars, including nearly half of the bottles of its new 10-year-old Garryana release, was stolen. And before that, about a million dollars worth of tequila from Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar’s Santo Tequila brand was stolen in a cargo heist. About 11,000 bottles of the tequila were recovered by the LAPD Cargo Theft Unit, but the Westland whiskey has not been found. A21 Wine & Spirits is currently working with the authorities to track down its missing whiskey as well. We reached out to a representative for a statement, but have not heard back yet.
