Drinkers undeterred by laced wines

Press, 30 July 1985, Page 10

Drinkers undeterred by laced wines

NZPA-Reuter Grinzing, Austria Black humour and puns about doctored wine punctuate the talk at the taverns of Grinzing, Vienna’s most Sr wine-drinking . Thirsty busloads of tourists and locals are still packing into the wine gardens, undeterred by the daily discovery of new wines laced with a poisonous sweetening agent. As authorities reported the fourteenth arrest in the scandal, which has wrecked Austria’s wine export trade and damaged its image abroad, top restaurants also reported no drop in sales. “Glyk auf,” a pun on the Austrian good luck greeting “Glueck auf,” has become a regular cry among drinkers at the taverns, a joking reference to the chemical diethylene-glycol which producer mixed in to improve theirnvine’s sweetness.

Waitresses struggling under trays of brimming wine carafes have become hardened to questions over the purity of their product. “We only serve glycol wine in the winter, when you need to keep warm,” says one, referring to the more usual use of the chemical as an “anti-freeze” substance. One waitress said she was given the order for “ein viertel Frostschutzmittel” (a quarter litre of anti-freeze) more often than the normal “ein viertel weiss” (a quarter of white). There is no real sense of concern and no cases have been reported yet of illness from the chemical, which can cause brain and kidney damage. “We’ve been here a week, we’ve drunk' wine every day, and we’re still alive,” declared a Swiss visitor (With a grin. . Tourist guides emphasise

that the traditional heuriger taverns, whose name derives from the word for “this year” as they usually serve young vintages, are not usually suspected of selling contaminated wine. The scandal has centred on producers of high-quality bottled wines who have added the chemical to raise the grade of their product. Much of this was exported, particularly to the main foreign market, West Germany. Magazine cartoonists have had a field day. One depicted desperate Austrian salesmen setting up a wine stand in a remote jungle, a rare spot untouched by news of the scandal. One newspaper emphasised that the maximum 10-year prison terms which the wine contaminators could face are a lenient solution — in earlier centuries the crime could bring death. Philips Reichenberger,

assistant manager of the luxury Schwarzenberg Palais "hotel, which has one of the finest restaurants in Vienna, said the scandal appeared to have had no effect on wine consumption. . “Just about all our guests ask whether our wines have no glycol. We assure them our wine list contains no wine from the merchants concerned,” he said. Some effects are expected on private wine buying. One of the biggest food supermarket chains has stopped all purchases while the authorities go through the laborious process of testing suspect wines. A black list of over 160 has been drawn up, and vintners have demanded a “white list” of untainted wines. As the scandal rolls on, Austrians are happy to remind guests of an old saying: “If you drink you die. If you don’t, you die anywayp-So drink ...”