WASHINGTON — A river of red wine flooded the streets of a Portuguese village on Sunday after two distillery tanks ruptured.
Nearly 600,000 gallons of wine from Levira Distillery covered entire streets of São Lourenço do Bairro, a small coastal village near Porto, Portugal.
Footage on social media showed crimson-colored alcohol gushing through the village, covering the entire width of the street and running in torrents down its gully.
Ana Nunes, who captured the wine spill on camera, said that the flood left residue on her walls and drenched her plants in wine.
Nunes said the tanks burst around 10:30 a.m. local time on Sunday. Officials said the tank rupture dumped enough wine into the streets to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The tanks were part of a government program aiming to help with the over-production of wine, the distillery company said in a statement.
The European nation has the world's highest consumption of wine per capita, according to the International Organization of Vine and Wine. However, the wine industry in Europe has taken a hit this summer due to inflation.
In a Facebook post, the distillery said it "deeply regrets" the incident and pledged to cover the costs of cleanup. There were no reports of injuries tied to the incident.
Officials were investigating the cause of the burst, according to the local newspaper Diário de Coimbra.