Staff at Tom Moore’s Tavern are still hoping for news on a number of valuable wine bottles stolen from the restaurant over the Cup Match holiday.

Speaking yesterday, restaurant boss Bruno Fiocca said that while the discovery of some bottles of wine in the nearby water had led to hopes that some of the more valuable bottles might be recovered, so far that has not been the case.

“We found a few bottles in the water. Not many,” Mr Fiocca said. “We were hoping to find more because it looks like they threw some away.

“We did pull a few out, but they were mostly the house wine in the water. We found a few slightly more expensive bottles, but nothing too expensive.”

He said that the police have visited the restaurant as part of their investigation, but so far there had been no updates.

The break-in took place sometime between the restaurant closing on Thursday night and staff arriving to prepare for dinner reservations around Friday lunchtime.

Staff members found several doors in the Hamilton Parish restaurant broken and the bar and wine cellar raided.

The restaurant, the oldest on the Island, had built up a wide variety of wine over its decades of business, including rare vintage bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1999 and Chateau Latour 1982 worth up to $5,850 a bottle.

Asked if the restaurant would be trying to replace the stolen bottles, Mr Fiocca said: “I don’t know about the expensive wines. At the moment I’m trying to fill the wine cellar slowly.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to come up with some of the more expensive wines because it’s expensive to replace them and some of them are not available any longer. The year is gone.”