WATCH: River Of Red Wine Surges Through Town In Portugal After Massive Tanks Rupture

glass of red wine

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Portugal is one of a few European countries that have the perfect climate for making wine, and it’s home to 14 unique regions that pride themselves on the variants they pump out. However, one town has found itself dealing with a bit of a headache thanks to an incident involving a local producer who inadvertently flooded it with its product.

Over the weekend, residents in São Lourenço do Bairro (located around 140 miles north of Lisbon) ran into a very unexpected issue when the streets in the small village were suddenly inundated with hundreds of thousands of gallons of red wine that flooded the area after two massive vats at the nearby Levira Distillery suddenly collapsed.

At least one person was able to film the fallout of the incident with a viral video that captured what was essentially a river of wine cascading down a hill as other residents stood outside to watch the surreal scene unfold.

According to The New York Post, firefighters scrambled to prevent the wine from flowing into the nearby Certima River, and while they were largely successful in achieving that goal, officials still had to deal with the environmental fallout of the incident after it was diverted into a nearby field where it saturated the soil.

The distillery—which said the incident stemmed from two tanks that were each home to 300,000 gallons of the wine that ultimately went to waste—issued a statement acknowledging its role in the miniature disaster, saying, “We assume full responsibility for the costs associated with cleaning and repairing the damage, having teams do so immediately.”

While at least one nearby residence had its basement flooded by the wine, it doesn’t appear there were any serious casualties (unlike the infamous Great Molasses Flood that claimed the lives of 21 people in Boston following a similarly shocking equipment failure in 1919).

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Connor Toole is the Deputy Editor at BroBible. He is a New England native who went to Boston College and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Frequently described as "freakishly tall," he once used his 6'10" frame to sneak in the NBA Draft and convince people he was a member of the Utah Jazz.