1985 Austrian diethylene glycol wine scandal

At the time of the scandal, West Germany was the most important export market for Austrian wine and had been so for several years, with an increasing trend.

As the sweet wines were more favoured at the time of the scandal than they have been in the 1990s and 2000s, and since the Prädikat designations were almost universally recognized throughout the German-speaking countries, a cheap Auslese or Beerenauslese was often identified as a "bargain" by many German consumers.

Some Austrian exporters had entered into long-term contracts with supermarket chains to supply large quantities of wine at a specified quality level in terms of Prädikat.

These producers encountered problems in some weak vintages, where much of the grape harvest did not reach sufficient ripeness levels.

Adulteration of products with DEG has led to thousands of deaths worldwide since the first recorded case: the Elixir sulfanilamide incident in 1937.

However, in one record-setting wine (a 1981 Welschriesling Beerenauslese from Burgenland), 48 grams per litre was detected, which meant that the consumption of a single bottle could have been lethal.

Therefore, unlike cases of simple sweetening, the 1985 DEG findings immediately took the proportion of a full-scale scandal requiring action by federal authorities in both West Germany and Austria.

Some countries like Switzerland and France confiscated thousands of bottles, and Japan introduced a ban on the import and sale of all Austrian wines on July 29, 1985.

[3] The industry's practice of DEG adulteration was traced back to Otto Nadrasky, a 58-year-old chemist and wine consultant from Grafenwörth, Lower Austria.

[3] In West Germany, following a lengthy investigation, six former leading employees of the wholesale dealer and bottler Pieroth were sentenced to fines of one million Deutsche Marks by the Landgericht in Koblenz in April 1996.

Pieroth fought a legal action in the administrative courts to try to establish that the Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health, Heiner Geißler (CDU) had exceeded his authority when his ministry had issued a public list containing all wines that had been found to contain DEG, and naming the bottler in each case.

It was finally settled on October 18, 1990, when the Federal Administrative Court of Germany ruled against Pieroth and found that Geißler had the right to issue the list.

[8] In Austria, it was reported that the wine, mixed with other agents, was used as a road antifreeze in the particularly severe continental winter of February to March 1986.

Shortly after the scandal, the Styrian bard Volker Schöbitz composed a polka under the rhyming title Zum Wohl, Glykol – "Cheers, glycol".