Austria's wine scandal
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1985, government scientists discovered anti-freeze in bottles of fine Austrian wine.
No one died or fell ill from drinking the poisoned wine, but the scandal nearly destroyed the country's wine-making industry.
In 2015, Susan Hulme spoke to Heidi Schroek, a young Austrian wine-maker at the time.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Vineyards in Sulztal, Austria. Credit: Franz Marc Frei/Getty)
Transcript
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| 0:59.7 | Today, we're taking you back to Austria to when scientists discovered anti-freeze in bottles of wine. |
| 1:05.3 | No one died or fell ill from drinking the poisoned wine, but the country's reputation as a wine producer was seriously |
| 1:11.5 | damaged. Susan Hume spoke to winemaker Heidi Shruck, who was visiting friends when the scandal |
| 1:16.9 | broke. We were sitting in the evening to watch the news and there was this bottle of wine |
| 1:22.5 | on the TV screen coming closer and closer and the speaker said, we warn you from buying and consuming |
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