A small Portuguese town was flooded with millions of liters of red wine after the explosion of two distillery tanks.
The streets of São Lourenço do Bairro, a town located in the center-north of Portugal, were literally painted red on Sunday. There are videos circulating online showing the red torrent flowing through the town.
The amount of wine spilled (2.2 million liters) was almost enough to fill an Olympic pool (2.5 million liters). Levira Distillery, the wine company that owned the tanks, posted a statement on Facebook saying it “deeply regrets the incident”, and that it takes “full responsibility” for it, and for everything associated with it. Authorities are investigating the causes.
For precaution, the responsible fire department diverted the wine, which was gushing downhill, to stop it from contaminating the nearby river. However, because of that, the red stream flowed into a nearby field. As a result, the wine-soaked soil has been taken to a special treatment plant to avoid future problems.
Given the peculiarity of the incident and the unique images it produced, São Lourenço do Bairro and Levira Distillery have been mentioned internationally.
The streets of Levira, Portugal were flooded with red wine after a distillery’s 2.2 million liter tanks burst.
— Pop Base (@PopBase) September 11, 2023
