Thief with a lot of bottle

A wine company did not notice a 12-litre bottle of cabernet sauvignon was missing for a week after a burglar struck.

The wine, taken from the two-storey Morton Estate showroom in Grafton, was recovered only after the thief was caught stealing from another office block.

The manager of the building, in the industrial area of Airport Oaks, followed 30-year-old Shane Gardiner in his car for several blocks while on the phone to police.

He gave them the registration number of Gardiner's 2006 Holden Commodore, which police discovered had been stolen a couple of weeks earlier.

He watched as Gardiner entered Jands Electrical on Doncaster St. Police arrived and caught him hiding in a boardroom.

The wine bottle, which weighed about 15kg and was about 1m tall, was found in the stolen Commodore.

Gardiner has spent most of his adult life in jail for burglary and fraud.

He has pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving a stolen vehicle and unlawfully entering a building and is in custody awaiting sentencing.