Thousands of bottles of wine worth €5m (£4.2m) have been stolen from a prestigious winery in Tuscany in what is thought to be the biggest heist of its kind in Italy.

A gang of at least seven masked individuals broke into the cellar of Marchesi Antinori, a family-owned winery dating back to the late 1300s, in Cortona after shutting off the alarms and surveillance cameras before using company forklifts to load two large trucks with 30,000 bottles of wine and making off.

Among the bottles targeted were those most prized by wine collectors and consumers, including Solaia, Guado al Tasso and Tignanello, notable as one of the first red wines in the Tuscany region to be produced without white grapes. All the stolen bottles, ranging in price between €120 and €400 a bottle, are from the firm’s 2023 vintage.

The theft occurred on Saturday as the company, based in the hilltop town of Cortona, prepared for a major shipment to buyers abroad. The robbery was discovered only when staff arrived for work on Monday morning.

“The gang was very prepared,” Renzo Cotarella, chief executive of Marchesi Antinori, told Corriere della Sera. “A theft of this scale and value has never happened before in Italy.”

He said he had “great confidence” that investigators would trace the stolen wine, which included 3,000 bottles, some of them magnum-sized, of Barolo Ginestra.

“Two trucks full of merchandise can’t just disappear into thin air,” he added. “The Tuscan roads are full of cameras. Perhaps with a bit of luck we’ll be able to recover at least some of the bottles.”

There have been several thefts at wineries in Italy in recent months, including one in Alba in the northern Piedmont region in mid-September.

But Cotarella, who suspects the same gang could have been involved, never imagined a theft of such scale would happen to his company. Unfortunately, its insurance policy does not cover the robbery of wine at such huge value.

“We had always considered the possibility of having a few cases of wine being stolen during their transportation, but certainly not that two trucks manage to enter the cellar and make off with such a huge haul,” he told Corriere.

Such large wine robberies were usually meticulously prepared and would probably be carried out by those with an intimate knowledge of wine themselves, Corriere suggested, with the target destination possibly collectors, bars or restaurants. However, a sudden increase in the supply of such wines could raise suspicion.

As the investigators continue their search, Cotarella said the company, which was established in 1385, has warned customers to be wary of any offers of its wine outside official channels.