A Washington state winery is still cleaning up after a disaster. Someone broke into its facility and drained thousands of gallons of its product, according to a story from Seattle’s NBC Channel 5 news.
Not long after employees at Sparkman Cellars left for the Thanksgiving holiday, a masked person wearing a cowboy hat can be seen on surveillance video walking to a side door.
The King County Sheriff’s Office said the suspect accessed the winery and barrel room using an employee keypad. Cameras show the suspect going to the back of the facility where the wine is produced.
Sparkman is one of Woodinville’s largest wineries and had just barreled all of its wine to age after a successful harvest.
Moments after the suspect enters the barrel room, a gush of white wine can be seen spilling out of a steel tank where the wine was waiting to be bottled. Even as alarms sound throughout the building, two 2,500-gallon tanks of white wine spill onto the floor of the winery.
Minutes later, the surveillance video shows the suspect exiting the building toward a wooded area with an umbrella. As they fled the scene, hundreds of thousands of gallons of wine can be seen emptying onto the facility floor.
The vandalism was discovered two days later when employees returned from the Thanksgiving break.
What’s next: The family-owned winery is scrambling to find solutions to fill orders, as wineries typically get only one shot at each wine per year. Sparkman is searching for wine that can be used to replace what was lost while also working to clean up a disastrous mess on the production floor.
The local sheriff’s office is investigating and has not publicly identified a suspect. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call the department at (206) 296-4155.