The Portuguese town of Levira was flooded by a river of red wine over the weekend, with around 2.2m litres of wine washing off the local street.
Videos went viral on social media platforms, revealing the town’s population is more than 2,000.
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A home’s basement near the distillery was also flooded with wine; no injuries have been reported.
Destilaria Levira said in a post, “We deeply regret the incident that occurred this morning.”
“We want to express our sincere concern for the damage caused in general.”
According to USA Today, the Anadia Fire Department diverted the wine to stop it from contaminating the nearby Certima River.
This large amount of wine was being stored at the distillery under the government’s “crisis distillation” program, which aims to use incentive funds to remove a glut of wine from the market pipeline before this year’s harvest.
Despite Portugal having the world’s highest wine consumption rate per capita, wine producers across Europe are facing challenging times.
Portugal’s wine consumption has sharply declined by 34 per cent, as reported by the European Union this summer, attributing it to factors such as inflation and other pressures.
Similarly, significant wine-producing nations like France and Germany are also witnessing double-digit drops in consumption.
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