Alcohol flowed freely in the Portuguese town of Levira over the weekend, after two vats holding about 2.2m litres of wine at a local distillery burst and flooded the streets.
Images and videos posted online showed red wine – almost enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool – gushing down the streets of Levira in Anadia, central Portugal.
A river of red wine runs through a street in Levira, Portugal. Photograph: INSTAGRAM @PITSTORE223/Reuters
“We deeply regret the incident that occurred this morning,” the Destilaria Levira said in a post on its Facebook page on Sunday. “We want to express our sincere concern for the damage caused in general.” It said the causes of the rupture were being investigated and that it took full responsibility for the cleanup.
The wine flowed down nearby roads, flooding land and at least one cellar, local media reported. Local firefighters helped clean up and the liquid that could be collected was taken away to a wastewater treatment plant.
The wine was prevented from pouring into a river, averting an environmental disaster, a member of the local council told the Jornal de Notícias.
The spill lasted for about an hour but did not leave a strong smell behind because it was “good quality wine,” the distillery’s chief executive Pedro Carvalho told the New York Times.
One tank collapsed because of a “structural failure,” he said, and the force of that torrent of wine knocked over the second vat.
The vats had been used to store excess wine, the distillery said. Portugal, along with other wine-producing countries such as France, now has an oversupply due to a drop in consumption, among other things.