There are many things it is difficult to steal: a car, a shark, a kiss, but the general rule of thumb is that the larger it is, the more difficult to pilfer. So like, stealing an entire house would be very hard because it’s massive. In fact, stealing anything bigger than a house would be testing, in all honesty.
You know, like a whole vineyard. Those gigantic, sprawling fields of grapes in the countryside - stealing the entirety of one of them would be, to put it mildly: close to impossible.
But a couple of thieves in Germany didn’t let stupid, out-of-date concepts like impossibility stand in their way, and they did exactly that - they got-darn stole a whole vineyard. The field, which sits next to a major supermarket car park (making it even more difficult to steal) in the village of Deidesheim, was absolutely ransacked by a bunch of enterprising teefs who managed to yoik 1,600 kg of the white grapes used to make Riesling wine. In total their bounty is estimated to be worth £7,110.
But how? How do you loot a whole vineyard? Well, by the looks of things, they ran a bloody professional harvesting machine over the entire thing - those notoriously small, quiet and unassuming vehicles that often slip by unnoticed.
Look at all those juicy juicy grapes, just beggin’ for a’stealin’
We say that, but according to police, the sight of harvesting machines heading into fields at dusk is not uncommon, and seeing as the thieves made away with the grape treasure sometime between teatime and sunset the following day (that’s a long time for anybody not to know what was going on in their vineyard - maybe “having a look” at it now and again might solve this in the future - just a thought), this may now seem plausible.
Turns out it’s not an uncommon crime, either - in France’s Soultz-Haut-Rhin district, they’ve even introduced police on horseback to patrol the vineyards for suspicious looking COMBINE HARVESTERS, a move which seems to have done some good, cutting down grape-related crime drastically.
Either way, those German kleptos are still on the loose, and so police are appealing for witnesses - but just who are they? Well, according to local vintners, one of the theories is that they’re rival winemakers acting out of jealousy, which makes a certain sort of sense.
Lot of effort though, no? Just grow better grapes, mate. Not hard.
(Images: Getty)
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