Lock up your wine if you live in the Bay Area, and you may also want to considering keeping your bragging down to a minimum as well.

More than likely that's how thieves found out about a recent stash of wine in one Bay Area home that was estimated to be worth $500,000.

From Burglars nab wine valued at $500,000:

Wine industry expert Eileen Frederikson wasn't surprised when she heard that thieves had broken into an Atherton home earlier this month and hauled off wine valued at half a million dollars.
More than 150 bottles were swiped, worth an average $3,000 each, the owner told police. One bottle alone, a magnum of 1959 Petrus, is valued between $4,000 and $6,000.

"It's rare to have $500,000 worth of wine in an average house," Frederikson said, "but the Peninsula doesn't have a lot of average houses."

Nor are wine collections valued in the millions uncommon in the Bay Area. In fact, says local wine merchant Joe Zugelder, at least 100 private wine collections in the region reach into seven figures. "There's a lot of money in this area, and we're close to the wine country," he said.

What crafty crooks may finally havenoticed is that fine wine has never been a cooler asset - and the market, legitimate and not, is hot. With rare exceptions, bottles of wine don't have serial numbers, making them nearly untraceable - unless they're in a class like the 1787 Chateau d'Yquem, which sold last year for $90,000.

Someone with wine smarts took a very select group of wines from the Atherton home Jan. 4 in what could be one of the largest wine heists ever. The thieves took everything except four or five bottles of lesser value, police said.

According to the rest of the article, it's not that easy to find buyers for stolen wine, but then again, it also indicated that this not the first big wine break-in around this area. So, go figure.