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Residents in a Portuguese village woke up to an almost biblical scene on Sunday morning. The streets were impassable, replaced by a raging river of close to 600,000 gallons of red wine.
After two wine tanks belonging to a local distillery burst, enough booze flowed down the roads of São Lourenço do Bairro to fill an Olympic-size pool — and to spark fears from local leaders about possible environmental damage.
Though wine flooded the streets of the town of some 2,200 people for most of the day, firefighters were able to divert the liquid before it gushed into the nearby Cértima River, which feeds into Portugal’s largest freshwater lake and supports a network of wetland habitats, reed beds and marshlands. No one was injured in the burgundy deluge, but municipal leaders told the local outlet JN that they are still evaluating possible damage to buildings or structures.
Sunday’s wine wave began at Destilaria Levira, a company that specializes in transforming wine into a slew of products, including gin, cleaning supplies and food oils. Though authorities are still investigating what caused the tanks to burst, the company said the wine they carried was essentially going to be destroyed — or distilled into raw alcohol — as part of the Portuguese government’s attempts to address a brewing wine crisis.
The nation with the world’s highest wine consumption per capita is among the European countries grappling with a massive surplus of wine this year. The combination of rising production costs and an ever-increasing range of alcoholic drink options has resulted in plummeting demand for wine in countries such as France, Spain and Italy.
France has too much wine. It’s paying millions to destroy the leftovers.
In Portugal, the European Commission estimated a 34 percent drop in wine consumption this year, especially in red and rosé wines — leading the country’s Ministry of Agriculture to invest 20 million euros, or nearly $21.5 million, into the distillation of wine. Through such emergency measure, wines with Protected Designation of Origin or Protected Geographical Indication marks — which signify a good originates from a specific region and has an officially established reputation — are now being put to new use in the country’s bid to stabilize the market.
The wine in São Lourenço do Bairro, however, wound up in a wastewater treatment plant after the Anadia Volunteer Fire Brigade managed to reroute the liquid, JN reported.
On Monday, Destilaria Levira thanked the government agencies that “helped us in these most difficult hours,” adding that the company is “making every effort to ensure that the wineries and producers who have worked with us over the years are not affected by this unfortunate incident” — especially when the grape harvesting season is in full swing.
“Destilaria Levira is aware of its important role in the collection of wine by-products in the national wine sector,” the company posted on Facebook.
Videos of the wine river, which the municipality of Anadia said resulted in damaged roads and at least one flooded residential basement, quickly went viral on social media, where users compared it to “a miracle” and argued that the worst part about the spill was — perhaps — the amount of wine that no one drank.
In a Sunday Facebook post addressed to its “dear neighbors” in São Lourenço do Bairro, Destilaria Levira apologized for the incident, saying it will “assume full responsibility for the costs associated with cleaning up and repairing the damage.”
Thousands of gallons of wine spill into a California river
The episode in Portugal isn’t the first time large amounts of wine have spilled. In 2020, the Russian River in California’s Sonoma County was tainted red after a 97,000-gallon winery tank burst open. That same year, a 13,000-gallon tank broke at a Spanish winery, leaving a flood of red wine gushing down like a breached dam.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/12/portugal-wine-river-distillery/