The wine was flowing freely, quite literally, in the Portugal town of São Luorenco de Bairro. Two tanks owned by Levira Distillery carrying 600,000 gallons of the booze collapsed on Sunday.
A video posted online showed the red wine gushing down a street on a steep hill in the small town. The distillery apologised for the incident and promised it would pay for damages and bear clean-up costs.
The incident is being investigated and no injuries were reported. The spill was so massive that the wine could have probably filled an Olympic-size swimming pool, the New York Post reported.
Authorities tried stopping the wine to prevent it from contaminating Certima River. Eventually, the Fire Department blocked the road and diverted the flow to a field nearby. The wine-soaked soil at the field has reportedly been taken to a special treatment plant. The wine also flooded the basement of a home near the distillery.
Streets were flooded with wine in Portugal when a winery's storage tanks broke. pic.twitter.com/dEpgZwPKml
— Dr. Ajayita (@DoctorAjayita) September 12, 2023
The distillery said its bountiful storage was caused by decreasing demand. The European Commission, in June, said it would support measures to convert excess wine to biofuel.
Current consumption of wine has decreased thanks to inflation in food and drink prices. Besides this, a bountiful harvest in 2022 and market fluctuations due to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to an accumulation of stocks, NBC reported.
