The Austrian Wine Poisoning | Down the Rabbit Hole

[Music] while known to many from the most affected areas the 1985 Austrian wine poisoning is often a hazy memory to those in Europe and entirely unknown to those outside of it when asked about it people will mention the unwitting consumption of hazardous chemicals and a mass public panic but the details will be muddled or contradictory most sources with precise information are left untranslated and misinformation about the event is commonly repeated through English publications so what was the Austrian wine poisoning during the 1980s Austrian wine had a reputation in Germany as a cheaper alternative to domestic and Italian wines often found in grocery stores these wines were made specifically to meet the high demand for sweetness from German consumers and the sweetest wines could consistently be priced the highest the chief difference of Austrian wine however was that much of the industry had been arranged for mass production first vineyards would leave the grapes on the vine as long as possible allowing them to ripen if left for long enough the producers would gain the legal right to label their bottles as the sweet and lucrative paid the COTS vine these ripened grapes would be harvested in late summer and shipped to manufacturers who would ferment the grapes in large vats the resulting wine would then be transported to bottlers in bulk the relatively high quality achieved by this process allowed Austrian winemakers to undercut the prices of older smaller scale wineries who were more established and mass production made for a more reliable source of wine but after years this production grew from prosperous to suspicious during the 1970s the amount of grade the COTS vine being produced surpassed feasibility and Austrian investigatory bodies began seeking warrants to test this mass-produced wine in order to discover precisely how these seemingly impossible numbers were being achieved without evidence incriminating particular wineries however the courts refused to grant these warrants even if they could investigate the Austrian authorities were understaffed and overworked allowing the wine industry in the country to operate largely unchecked and unsupervised in one instance a wine merchant arrived at a cooperative with his tanker to collect wine but as they were pumping wine into the truck the man noticed that they had attached a second hose investigating further he found that they were pumping water into the truck as well enraged the man refused to take the wine and approached the Austrian wine control who told him that they would be unable to begin inquiries for another six weeks due to the massive amount of work they already had to perform finding this answer unacceptable he then approached the Ministry of Agriculture who revealed to him that there were only 18 inspectors tasked with overseeing approximately 60,000 companies with such a state of affairs there was little question that adulteration of wine especially paid the COTS vine had become widespread in 1975 the Chamber of labor and employees in Salzburg Austria performed both chemical tests and expert taste tests on 76 different bottles of austrian wine of them only 23 were properly labeled and 56 were defective but what investigators couldn't have known was precisely how large the problem had grown or how far winemakers would go to make a profit [Music] on December 21st 1984 an unknown man with the German accent entered the Federal Institute of agricultural chemistry in Vienna and placed a bottle full of liquid on the table declaring that inside of this bottle was the chemical being used to produce such vast quantities of wine he then exited the building leaving the bottle on the table he was never identified after a month of analysis chemists were able to determine that the bottle contained numerous chemicals several of them toxic though this tip wasn't enough to investigate any winery in particular it meant that they knew what tests to apply if given the opportunity and this would come less than two months later in mid-february of 1985 another tip was sent from someone inside the Austrian wine industry to government officials a tip that seemed too ridiculous and brazen to be believed a factory owner was purchasing large amounts of a chemical one of the chemicals from the mysterious bottle and attempting to write it off on his taxes as a business expense claiming that it was all to be used for his small tractor after inspecting the documents this blatant discrepancy proved enough to obtain a warrant and a chemical investigation team was sent upon their arrival they confiscated the wine being stored in the vats and sent samples back to a laboratory soon their suspicions were confirmed the wine contains significant amounts of diethylene glycol diethylene glycol is typically used as a solvent or combined with other chemicals to make numerous liquids such as brake fluid and wallpaper stripper its effect on humans however is brutal after ingestion diethylene glycol enters the bloodstream where it is transported throughout the body and takes destructive effect in two particular ways the first and better understood is its interaction with the liver and the kidneys when diethylene glycol enters the liver it is metabolized into two new chemicals two hydroxy ethoxy acetic acid and die glycolic acid when the latter of these encounters the tubules of the kidneys it enters the cells and damages the mitochondria call necrosis or literally cell death if enough of the kidney is damaged it can no longer adequately filter toxins out of the blood a condition called renal failure this eventually leads to metabolic acidosis where the blood becomes too acidic for the body to use the second and more poorly understood effect is that on the nervous system through mechanisms apparently still unknown ingestion of diethylene glycol causes damage to the myelin sheath and axon of nerve cells making them unable to properly carry electrical signals unchecked this can lead to permanent paralysis either partial or complete studies of people affected by diethylene glycol showed that nearly every single neuron was damaged by the poisoning to some degree though the amounts found in this wine were small enough not to cause acute poisoning long-term consumption can cause the same effects and lead to organ and brain damage while adding diethylene glycol to wine was unorthodox the reasons for doing so were easy to glean wines with added sugar were worth less and tests were often performed to make certain that no additives were being used without proper labeling this meant that to sweeten wine without reducing profits another chemical would have to be used one that was more difficult to detect diethylene glycol was poorly understood at the time the tests for it were rudimentary and most importantly it was sweet in small enough amounts the effects of poisoning could be minimized while adding a noticeable amount of sweetness body and aroma and if someone did suffer the effects of poisoning it would be difficult to trace the source back to the wine by this method wine cellars could enhance lower quality wine to mimic prey the COTS vine at the time the chemical investigation team assumed that this was an isolated incident limited to cheap mass-produced wine but as the week's progressed this optimistic assumption proved drastically incorrect with this wine confiscated investigators began searching for more wineries who may have performed similar adulteration but as they did a parallel incident began occurring across Austria the bacterial colonies used in sewage treatment facilities were suddenly and in click oblique collapsing and untreated sewage was flowing into the rivers and devastating their ecosystems it didn't take long to discover what was causing this despite attempts at secrecy knowledge of the investigations had leaked to the wine industry and now other wineries who had been sweetening their wine were desperately dumping it into the sewer to hide it from the investigators however the diethylene glycol and the wine had the effect of killing the bacterial colonies in the water treatment plants and thereby unintentionally broadcasting their actions investigators were forced to scramble in order to find these wineries before they could destroy their tainted wine after raiding a few sellers from winemakers in Bergen lund they quickly discovered that it wasn't only the cheap wine that had been affected both cheap and expensive winemakers were adding diethylene glycol to their wines in order to sweeten it by this point it was apparent that secrecy was no longer possible on April 23rd 1985 the Austrian government announced the discovery to the public and issued a health warning against paid the COTS vine two days later approximately two million litres of wine were confiscated to await laboratory testing however it would take some time for the laboratories with their limited resources to finish their tests over the following months these tests would reveal just how deeply this poisoning had rooted itself in the Austrian wine industry and how it had been exacerbated by ignorant bodies secretly performing their own actions independently you you while there was little news over the next few months those chemists tasked with testing the wine were understaffed overworked and woefully disorganized in some instances a single sample of wine was tested 100 times due to poor communication and the number of samples have ballooned so quickly that testing all of the wine became impossible with contemporary methods with or without proper organization these chemists also realized that since the government had announced their investigation the poisoners now had the opportunity to hide their work by diluting the affected wine before it could be confiscated and so the chemists settled on a different plan they would develop new methods of testing after only three months of dedicated work they were able to increase the sensitivity of the tests by four thousand percent so that five milligrams of diet alene glycol could be detected in one liter of wine but perhaps more importantly these tests could be completed in as little as five minutes making the task of testing much more expedient over time more people in the wine industry were implicated and their wines were placed on a blacklist with the revelation of this poisoning doctors were finally linking illnesses to Austrian wine consumption on July 11th multiple cases were reported in the newspapers one was of a 36 year old man who had bought 50 bottles have prayed to cots vine to fill his cellar and decided to drink some of it that same night he began suffering from stomach cramps and his body began shaking another man drank a bottle of prayed the COTS vine over the course of a number of evenings until eventually he started vomiting and suffering from kidney stones the following day July 12th a report was released about a family who had gathered for their seventy seven-year-old grandmother's birthday party and the eleven adults all shared bottles of prayed the COTS vine by the next day each of them was feeling nauseated and dizzy another case emerged later that month which was far more dire four years before the tests for diethylene glycol began a retired German man had been on vacation near Vienna where he drank large amounts of sweet wine then bought another several leaders to take back home with him to Munich during his return journey however he began suffering from severe kidney pain and nausea for which he was admitted to the hospital there his condition worsened until finally his liver failed completely the doctors were able to deduce the cause of his illness glycol poisoning which had come from the large amount of wine he had ingested the newspapers initially reported him as the first confirmed death of the poisoning but this was refuted a few days later when the man provided an interview to a competing newspaper in which he dryly noted I am fine now and recounted his poisoning from four years prior this last report revealed a concerning fact at first it was believed that the usage of diethylene glycol was much smaller in scope this event showed that wineries have been adding the chemical to their wines for over five years and as laboratories continued testing this scope only widened the oldest bottle discovered with the chemical was bottled in 1976 meaning that this had been occurring for nearly a decade at the least then on July 19th it was revealed that a single bottle of iced wine contains 16 grams of diethylene glycol in it enough to sicken an adult and kill someone susceptible to it that same day advertisements appeared in numerous newspapers internationally purchased by the Austrian wine propaganda office who were desperate to salvage what public goodwill they could Fritz Hall Garten in his book wine scandal translates it so no pardon against the black sheep of Austrian viticulture criminal investigations have been initiated already on April 23rd 1985 the authorities took all precautions all wines found to be adulterated were confiscated official report of the Austrian wine control 50 2790 Austrian growers 1582 Austrian wine merchants and 52 viticultural cooperatives produce wine under the strictest official control of quality these statements however were obviously hollow to the public who had grown weary of Austrian wine as new batches were found to include diethylene glycol and the blacklist you to grow as if to rebut the propaganda office another bottle of wine was found to contain 45 grams of diethylene glycol per liter almost 3 times as much as the iced wine only 6 days after they released their advertisement by the end of July over 5 million litres of Austrian wine had been confiscated however German wine resellers didn't want to lose profits on their imports and so they silently re-exported their Austrian wine to other countries who were still uninformed about the poisoning soon afterward these countries place similar bans but only after numerous drinkers began to show symptoms of paralysis after drinking Austrian wine in an odd quirk of linguistic barriers Japan and China also ordered a ban on the sale of Australian wine due to the similarity of the countries names in the course of testing this wine numerous other scandals were inadvertently discovered such as the fact that much of the wine market wasn't wine at all but a special concoction named kunst vine which tastes remarkably similar to actual wine yet contains no grapes supposedly one company was making 100,000 liters of it every month around 1980 kunst winemakers had begun adding diethylene glycol as well but other scandals were of much more dire consequence and one explained the devastating effects that some people were experiencing from the glycol one of the known treatments for diethylene glycol poisoning is ethanol better known as the alcohol normally found in drinks ethanol reacts with the same liver enzymes as diethylene glycol and if the enzymes are occupied by the ethanol then the glycol can pass through the liver without being transformed into the toxic dye glycolic acid where after it is safely expelled from the body this meant that ideally the ethanol and the wine would help counteract the toxicity of the diethylene glycol and likely did in many cases however the laboratories discovered that some wineries were adding more substances alongside the glycol most prominently sugar sugar has the opposite effect as ethanol instead increasing the toxicity of the diethylene glycol and work against whatever safety the ethanol may have provided as this was being discovered another new found scandal was taking place in Germany after diethylene glycol was found in wines that have been exported Austrian winemakers claimed that German wine distributors were the ones who must have added the chemical after importing it despite the clear evidence to the contrary to refute these claims the German government tested German wines surmising that if this adulteration was being performed by these companies it was unlikely that they were limited to only Austrian wines during testing however something odd was discovered some bottles showed small amounts of diethylene glycol much smaller than what was in Austrian wines at first these German wine distributors suggested that diethylene glycol could occur naturally during fermentation or perhaps and the pesticides used on the grapes chemists quickly refuted these possibilities then they attempted to blame the Austrian wines for contaminating their tanks but these lives worth in such contamination would only result in trace amounts of diethylene glycol not the 20 to 30 milligrams that were appearing in these bottles the reason was simple and was admitted by multiple sellers they had secretly been mixing their German wines with Austrian wines to enhance the flavour in the meantime the German government blocked 10 billion litres of wine from entering the country any further but another revelation was perhaps more concerning for the end of July it was discovered that diethylene glycol had been intentionally added to grape juice at a concentration of one gram per liter while this was less than what was typically found in the affected wines much less diethylene glycol is required to sicken children and even if this amount wasn't enough to cause acute poisoning ingestion over long periods of time could still cause organ and neurological damage especially without the mitigating effects of ethanol with vast amounts of information being revealed to the public in such a short time the media began focusing on this wine adulteration more and more and affected wine was given a name antifreeze wine after reporters somewhat inaccurately stated that the chemical being used was antifreeze while died ethylene glycol is used as such in rare cases other chemicals are far more common for the purpose despite this the name antifreeze wine became the common term by this point the scandal had become a major cultural event and a poco was even created in its honor zum vole glycol or in English Cheers - glycol with the public enraged they began to demand answers to three questions in particular how was the government involved how had this happened in the first place and why reporters began investigating how long the government had known about this adulteration and they noticed a discrepancy on May 10th the Austrian government alerted German officials that contaminated wine had been exported to their country however while the German government warned about drinking wine in Austria the public wasn't informed that wine for sale in Germany have been affected meaning that German citizens were still unwittingly buying wine with diethylene glycol what wasn't reported was that on May 30th the German wine investigators were ordered to stop taking samples suggesting that somebody in the upper echelon of the German government wanted this poisoning kept a secret it wasn't until July 9th almost a month and a half later that a warning was given to the public the reason for these strange occurrences was soon discovered as opposed to contacting the German Federal State the Austrian investigators informed the Ministry of viticulture in mites whose chief concern was the well-being of the importers rather than public health hoping to salvage the wine they kept this information secret and sought counsel to discover how much died appalling glycol would be hazardous to a person's health and plan to approach the Minister of the Federal State for permission to issue new licenses that would allow the sale of antifreeze wine their plan was to discover the maximum safe amount of the chemical and allow winemakers to mix the affected wine with clean wine to reach this predetermined limit when this was discovered the public outcry was massive and many demanded the resignation of those attempting to allow the sale of the antifreeze wine one month after this revelation one of the three people involved resigned and the other two were transferred to other ministries but investigators had a more pressing concern the discovery of how this had happened the first step was determining likely perpetrators using diethylene glycol as an additive seemed almost insidiously genius not only did it enhance the flavor profile of the wine in profound ways but it was also incredibly cheap and could be bought in bulk what's more detection had been difficult and time-consuming before the improvements making it unlikely to be discovered especially with the Austrian wine control so overwhelmed the investigators reasoned that whoever at first conceived of this likely had some sort of background in chemistry working off of this assumption they discovered their prime suspect a man named otto Ned raske nadrazi had spent time as a chemist and had later gone on to become a wine consultant for numerous large wine companies he was promptly arrested alongside dozens of others though many of these people had to be let go due to a lack of evidence enough were detained that as court hearings proceeded the greater reasoning behind the scandal was made clear during the 1970s the climate of Austria was changing rain had become more frequent and temperatures were gradually rising which had an effect on the grapes as mentioned before farmers wanted to leave grapes on the vine for as long as possible so that they could ripen and sweeten but the extra rain was making the grapes plump up and fall off of the vine long before the end of the season resulting in crops that were significantly more sour in spite of this production companies still had orders to fill many exporters had signed contracts with German importers for large quantities of sweet wine a solution would have to be found and so Otto Ned raske got to work as a chemist he had stumbled upon the idea of using diethylene glycol as an additive and so he experimented to find the correct balance so that the taste could be enhanced while avoiding detection to aid this endeavor he also added other chemicals that helped hide its presence and further enhanced the taste of the wine what's more he discovered that diethylene glycol could hide the presence of added water which would allow companies to dilute the wine and further increase their yield once he had ascertained the proper mixture he handed the formula to the companies for whom he worked from there they sold their secret to other companies and over the years more and more wine producers began using this idea until approximately 15% of all Austrian wines had some amount of diethylene glycol in it some companies tweaked the formula to add even more glycol this flippant use the chemical may have been due to a misunderstanding while mass poisonings had occurred in other countries before the toxicity of diethylene glycol was poorly understood and in court multiple wine merchants professed that they had researched diethylene glycol before using it and found no literature to suggest that it was poisonous therefore they felt morally confident adding it to their wine despite the inherent Dukla city when inspectors learned of this trick producers frantically tried to hide their affected wine the federal government had stated the names of the two companies that had initially been discovered using glycol which gave their suppliers time to hide or destroy their wine some as mentioned previously had dumped theirs into the sewer but when this only broadcast their usage to the authorities others realized that something else would have to be done wineries began to run their own tests in order to discover whether the equipment could detect the amount of glycol that they were using hiding the results in neighboring businesses in case they were raided by their calculations they would need to dilute the affected wine with 10 parts unaffected wine in order to avoid detection but this immediately became a problem none of the wineries had that much unadulterated wine and there was no way for them to know what other companies had added glycol to their product if they bought from another winery they risked making their wines even more toxic and having even more antifreeze wine in their possession in the end this proved pointless as the chemists devised their new methods of detection and many of the culpable parties were arrested though court proceedings would take another 12 years the scandal itself was finally over but in the meantime the rest of the wine industry was left to salvage what they could of their livelihoods [Music] even as countries lifted their bans on Austrian wine consumer trust had been hopelessly destroyed the government rushed new and stringent laws through legislation to ensure the safety of the wine and salvage the market and one economist famously stated that everything would be resolved and forgotten in a year his optimistic assessment was almost comically wrong within weeks of the media coverage wine merchants were declaring bankruptcy even those companies who hadn't participated in the scandal were stigmatized and Austrian wine was shunned internationally of note was that no wine growers have been implicated in the scandal only fermenters and merchants and yet many vineyards were forced to close permanently as the austrian wine economy staggered and they could no longer sell their grapes especially the lower quality ones those merchants who had participated however we're indignant and one defense lawyer blamed consumers for buying cheap wine without more careful consideration these defenses proved ineffective and many were given the maximum 10-year sentence in the end Austrian wine exports were down to less than 5 percent of where they had been only one year prior despite this some of the companies at the center of the scandal managed to avoid bankruptcy according to official records nobody had been injured by the glycol but this seems unlikely given the scope of the poisoning in the meantime the austrian government was now left with the daunting task of destroying 270 million litres of contaminated wine and their answer came from surprising sources an electric power plant and a cement plant in 1987 it was announced that technicians from the Asahi Shen trial craft vodka in Carinthia had devised a method for burning the wine to produce electricity similarly a cement plant had retrofitted their furnaces to permit the use of wine as a coolant and in this manner all of the wine was gradually destroyed with the poisoning conclude the country said about rebuilding their industry wine makers began a campaign to resist the harsh new quality control laws enacted by the government arguing that the scandal wasn't caused by weak laws but rather by a lack of enforcement after they couldn't come to an agreement with lawmakers multiple irate farmers through salads at Gunther Hayden the Agriculture Minister still the wine laws held while the export market had been annihilated the domestic market had survived with sales somewhere between 90 to 94 percent compared to the previous year this may largely be credited to the dedicated buyers of particular wineries as well as the still thriving tourism industry but the image of sweet wine tainted wineries focused on cultivating grapes to make dry white wines while wineries worked on reviving old traditional Austrian methods of production those winemakers who survived the scandal began taking even greater pride in their product focusing on improving the quality as opposed to the quantity this was encouraged by new wine colleges established across Austria with the express purpose of educating aspiring venters these colleges were tasked with educating and guiding a new generation of winemakers and merchants who embraced a wide variety of new ideas adapting quickly to the changing tastes of consumers and enacting more sustainable growing practices leading to the long-term positive health of wineries for example some new wine growers used a practice called talbin lstoneham where they would remove 50 to 70% of the grapes from the vine so that the remaining ones would receive more of the plant's nutrients and energy while this resulted in less wine overall and was labor-intensive the resulting product was of notably higher quality the scandal had also encouraged consumers to be more conscious of their purchases and they began to take a greater interest in both the production process and the quality of the wine they were drinking which in turn demanded a greater knowledge from producers and merchants with time and with the new winery practices drinkers began to buy wine in greater amounts once again this was bolstered by the confidence instilled by the new stringent government policies of new bottle would be tested for composition and quality and would be marked as approved with an excised stamp that included an identification number and date of inspection it would be sixteen years before the export market reached the levels of profit they once had but by the time they did the reputation had been radically altered though the modern Austrian wine market is much smaller than those of other countries such as Italy and France they are renowned for their quality and they are instantly recognizable thanks to the newly designed distinctive red white red excised stamp on top of every bottle that signifies it as approved for export by the federal government after both chemical tests and a taste test inadvertently the stamps had become a marketing tool today the wine scandal is seemingly forgotten replaced by modern acknowledgment of the universally high Austrian quality and enforced by what are often agreed to be the strictest wine laws in the world some winemakers still grumble about the brash stupidity of the old wine merchants who added diethylene glycol to their wine but all will agree that if the poisoning had never happened austrian wine would be drastically different and most seemed thankful for the prosperity that the modern wine industry is enjoying with no need for added glycol [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Fredrik Knudsen

Views: 1,691,797

Rating: 4.9659109 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary

Id: qhN-o2ame-4

Length: 34min 12sec (2052 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/heathensong]

There is an early episode of the Simpsons where Bart goes on exchange to France and ends up at a dodgy vineyard where he ends up exposing to the police that antifreeze is being added to the wine. After watching this episode of down the rabbit hole the subject of this episode seems like the inspiration for that episode of the Simpsons.

[u/I_do_try_sometimes]

Finally, he put out a new video! I really like this guy’s channel. He puts a lot of work into his research and covers some unique topics. Even things that I initially didn't find interesting based off the title, I end up enjoying.

[u/DrNick1221]

I had honestly never known of this before.

I honestly love the range of topics the DTRH series covers, from Cults in Oregon to the ongoing misadventures of Chris chan.

Speaking of which, the ongoing chris chan docuseries by geno samuel is one hell of a watch as well. Currently on part 35.

[u/FreakOfTheWoods]

One of the best youtube documentaries I've seen constantly engaging and something I've never heard of, very high stakes, very well done. One of Fredrik Knudsen's best

[u/Factory_Supervisor]

Check out this channel's video on the Mouse Utopia.

[u/CaptenJackHarkness]

Hell yeah, thanks for reminding me of this channel.

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Propaganda departments was still a thing in the 80's? Not named PR? TIL.

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I'm surprised the poisoning of children's juice got glanced over. It's one thing of adults drink themselves to retardation, but kids? Sorry what? 10 years for a decade of retards. That's comical.

[u/salmon10]

Damn informative! That's a hell of a rabbit hole alright

[u/Adderkleet]

(at around 18 minutes) I wonder if this is why grape juice is not a common thing in Ireland (and a lot of Europe).