For a few glorious hours in a small town in northern Italy, this week, the wine flowed like water from residents' faucets and taps.
Thanks to a malfunction at a local winery, at least 1,000 liters of ready-to-be bottled Lambrusco wine managed to leak into the water pipes in the northern Italian town of Castelvetro. According to a post from local officials, the winery's glitch lasted about three hours and impacted 20 homes, deputy mayor Giorgia Mezzazqui, wrote on Twitter.
While the wine was watered down and probably not very tasty, it did not pose any health risks.
According to the Catina Settecani winery, which was responsible for the glitch, the mistake happened after a faulty valve in the washing circuit for bottles allowed the wine to seep into the town's water lines due to the pressure involved, CNN reported. According to Fabrizio Amorotti, the commercial manager at the winery, the malfunction was "appreciated by many" residents.
"Some clients in the area called us to warn us about it, and to share they were bottling the wine!" Amorotti told CNN.
"I was washing some stuff in the kitchen", Maurizio Agpi told Italian press agency AGI "I turned off the tap, turned it on again, and instead of the water I saw wine: I said 'Allegria' (joy) and we toasted."
Castelvetro is located in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, which is among the areas that have been hardest hit by the novel coronavirus. More than 3,900 people have been infected in Italy with 149 people having died from the disease there.