This year, the Italian town of Castelvetro di Modena may have taken ‘wine on tap’ a bit too far when wine was running through their home faucets and taps.
On the morning of March 4, twenty lucky(?) homes awoke to find wine rushing into their home sinks, showers and tubs. According to a report in the Modena newspaper, Gazzetta di Modena, residents were initially alarmed and disgusted. However, they soon recognized the aroma of a local sparkling red wine: Lambrusco Grasparossa from Cantina Settecani.
The blend bears Italy’s second-highest geographical distinction and is a celebrated regional specialty, which accounts for the residents placing it’s aroma of violets, strawberries, plums and cherries fairly quickly. It wasn’t just wine pouring from the faucets, it was slightly diluted with the water that was meant to travel those pipes, but that didn’t stop some of the affected locals from filling all of the available containers in their homes. Others immediately called the town officials or the winery. Many did both.
After three hours, Castelvetro water officials and Cantina Settecani staff finally traced the source of the mishap to failed circuitry in the winery’s bottling plant. According to the winery’s commercial manager Fabrizio Amorroti, malfunctioning valves partnered with pressure differentials caused the wine, which was stored in a large silo, to shoot through water lines and be diverted into surrounding homes. As if you needed another reason to consider property near a winery, wine literally on tap might be a good one.
While some residents gleefully took advantage of the free wine, others worried that the problem could happen again, this time with something less delicious and innocent as wine. Thankfully, the situation posed no health risks, though the winery lost around 1,000 liters of wine.
The town’s water service has assured that it is taking measures to ensure this never happens again, but are also choosing to smile at the situation as a respite from the havoc that the coronavirus crisis is and will continue to wreak on the town’s economy due to the lack of tourism.
So we beg the question, what would you do if wine flowed from your faucets? At Skolnik, we might fill one of our stainless steel wine drums before making any calls to correct the “problem”.