‘River of red wine’ flows through town after 580,000 gallon spillage

A person's basement was said to be flooded with wine

The alcoholic flash flood happened Sunday in a small town in Portugal when, according to the New York Post, two Destilaria Levira tanks carrying a considerable volume of alcohol spilled while being transported through São Lourenço de Bairro. Some 580,000 gallons of wine turned the road in the town - home to around 2,000 residents - into a drinker's paradise.

A video shared on X, formerly Twitter, shows a road submerged in a red river of win. The beverage pours down a hill and around a bend in the municipality of Anadia.

The Levira Distillery has apologised to neighbours, after the torrent of wine is said to have entered a home's basement, the Portuguese news platform Jornal Diário de Aveiro reported, according to ABC News. A person's basement was said to have been flooded with wine.

No one was injured in the spill which firefighters later diverted from a nearby river into fields.

Because of the magnitude of the wine contamination, an environmental warning was issued, the New York Post reported.

Destilaria Levira said in a statement that the release happened after two storage tanks burst in an incident that is now under investigation. It has vowed to handle cleanup, repair and damage.

Jornal Diário de Aveiro said more than 580,000 gallons of wine ended up in streets.

The distillery said its bountiful storage was the result of governmental response to a wine surplus in Europe, caused by decreasing demand, ABC News reported.

Destilaria Levira described the oversupply as a crisis.

In June, the European Commission, acknowledged the issue and vowed to support measures to convert excess wine to biofuel.

it said in a statement: "The wine sector is being hit by reduced consumption due to the current inflation on food and drinks prices, which in association with a good 2022 harvest and ensuing consequences of the market difficulties during the pandemic have led to an accumulation of stocks."

In March 2020, CNN reported that 1,000 litres of Cantina Settecani red wine to be bottled seeped into water pipes and through the faucets and shower heads of around 20 homes, 10 miles south of the northern Italian town of Castelvetro di Modena.

Giorgia Mezzacqui, who was deputy mayor at the time, told CNN the wine leaked through pipes for approximately three hours.

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