It wasn’t too long ago that we heard about France spending $216 million dollars to destroy 80 millions gallons of wine, and may I present to them a more cost effective way for getting rid of their excess alcoholic drink…
Residents in São Lourenco do Bairro, Portugal might have thought they were dreaming when they stepped out onto their front lawn and saw a river of wine flowing through their hilly streets.
Two large tanks owned by the Levira Distillery in the Portuguese town suddenly burst this past Sunday, spilling wine into the streets and making it look like the elevator scene out of The Shining.
This story is so strange that I, probably like you, just have a lot of thoughts running through my head about it.
Here are a couple of them:
-I had no idea that wine was kept in such large containers. I’m not sure what I assumed wine would be stored in, but I would’ve thought that it wasn’t stored all in one thing. Spreading it out into different vessels seems like it would be better, but that’s easy to say with hindsight.
-I would have gotten every container and bucket in my house and ran out there and started collecting it. Some people might say that isn’t “hygienic,” but the alcohol would kill the germs, right? That’s at least what I would go with…
Apparently my second thought wouldn’t have been a good idea because the wine spill actually created an environmental emergency in São Lourenco do Bairro. Officials in the area were forced to act fast and divert the wine from pouring into the Certima River.
The town’s fire department managed to block off areas that would have allowed the waves of wine to pour into the river, and it harmlessly flowed into a nearby field (I bet crops from that field would be legendary).
Take a look at the flash flood of wine pouring through the streets in Portugal below:
