Originally published in the Guardian on 5 April 1986
Two Italian ministers defended themselves yesterday against calls for their resignation after 16 people died from drinking adulterated wine.
The Health Minister, Mr Costante Degan, and the Agriculture Minister, Mr Filippo Maria Pandolfi, told Parliament that the Government had done everything in its power to combat the spread of wine illegally strengthened with methyl (wood) alcohol.
But they admitted that the scandal affecting some of Italy's most prestigious northern wine growing areas had struck a severe blow at one of the most vital sectors of the country's agriculture with grave repercussions for exports.
The ministers are being criticised for the time it took to react to the crisis and warn Italians of the dangers of the poisoned wine.
The Agricultural Ministry, meanwhile, has produced a list of 31 suspect wines. The labels mostly bore addresses in Piedmont.
The 16th death had been attributed at first to a heart attack until members of the dead man's family found a bottle of suspect wine in his cupboard. The final number of deaths due to adulterated wine may never be known, since the bottles had been on the super-market shelves in northern Italy for some months.
Six men have been arrested in the past 48 hours and an arrest warrant has been issued for a seventh. Inquiries have pointed to two firms selling wood alcohol, which should have been used in producing solvents. Many of the purchasers, however, were people in the wine trade whose names are now known to the investigators. All Italian wine imported to the US will carry a special government guarantee in future. No structure exists for examining all wines on sale here, or bottled for export, and it will take some time to create the mechanism for proper controls.
Italians, meanwhile, are being told to avoid wines that are being sold here for about the same price as popular cola drink, as it is impossible to produce a wine made entirely from grapes at that price.
Italian wines with labels bearing the initials, DOC, are considered the more genuine, as the initials mean that the wine is made from grapes from the district given on the label.
In Bonn, meanwhile, a Christian Democrat, Mr Egon Susset, called for a ban on imports of Italian wine until the authorities determined which brands had been doctored.
The call came as Italy's ambassador to West Germany, Mr Luigi Vittoria Ferraris, appealed to wine-drinkers not to shun his country's wine because of "a few wine gangsters".