wine scandal

[alocispepraluger102]

does anyone remember a wine scandal in europe some years ago when some form of antifreeze was added to sweeten the wines?

[brownie]

Do I remember?

From the New York Times:

Austrian sweet wine scandal

[porcy62]

In Italy we had a great scandal about wine: they added methanol, several deaths. 1986 I think.

Edited December 6, 2007 by porcy62

[Claude]

I remember that. It was called the "glycol wine" scandal.

In 1985, diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze) appeared to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high (for most people) levels of consumption (one would have had to have ingested about 28 bottles per day for two weeks).

The wine-fraud practice of adding diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze) to wine was referenced in Simpsons episode "The Crepes of Wrath" and in "Allo' Allo'" episode "Puddings can go off".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud

[porcy62]

I remember that. It was called the "glycol wine" scandal.

In 1985, diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze) appeared to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high (for most people) levels of consumption (one would have had to have ingested about 28 bottles per day for two weeks).

The wine-fraud practice of adding diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze) to wine was referenced in Simpsons episode "The Crepes of Wrath" and in "Allo' Allo'" episode "Puddings can go off".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud

Thanks Claude!

At the end of wiki you posted there is a line about italian scandal: 23 people died.

Edited December 6, 2007 by porcy62

[alocispepraluger102]

thanks brownie, porcy, claude.