Hungarian winemaker kills thief with poisoned wine

(TDB) - A Hungarian winemaker has been sent to prison for murder after he poisoned wine with antifreeze to stop a thief.

According to Agence France Presse, the producer from Vacszentlaszlo, 50km east of Budapest, had been plagued by a spate of thefts and was determined to teach the thief, or thieves, “a lesson”.

He therefore laced some bottles with antifreeze and left them where they were likely to be taken.

On 24 October, a 30-year old man – who has not so far been identified as an employee of the winery – stole several poisoned bottles and shared them with friends.

According to police in the Pest department, he was hospitalised a few days later showing signs of poisoning and was dead by 1 November – though the exact cause of his death has not been firmly established.

Five other individuals have also been hospitalised for poisoning.

The case has drawn some parallels with the Austrian “antifreeze scandal” of the mid-1980s.

However, there is a very important differences between the cases – namely that the one in Hungary was a one-off and deliberately designed to severely poison and possibly even kill anyone drinking the adulterated wine.

In Austria in 1985, producers were using diethylene glycol to boost the wines sweetness – diethylene glycol being a component of antifreeze.

On the other hand, it was added in such minute quantities that one would have died fro alcohol poisoning long before levels of toxicity from the diethylene glycol grew to fatal levels.

Protecting one’s products to such extremes is not without precedent in Hungary. In 2008, a cucumber grower was fed up with someone who had been stealing the vegetables from his garden since the late 1980s and so he electrified his fence with 220 volts.