Ah New Zealand. It’s quaint really.
You could wonder just where the supplier was getting their cleaning materials from if they pack them into old wine containers. Waste not want not.
More interesting to me is the No-fault accident law. Clearly, somewhere here IS at fault, and yet it all balances out. The victims receive compensation from the fund, the fund gets money from the fines. And there is more money to spare because you dont have to pay too many lawyers 50% of your settlements.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Two women were hospitalized after a New Zealand cafe mistakenly served dishwashing liquid as mulled wine, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Chico’s Restaurant Ltd. in the mountain resort of Queenstown on South Island pleaded guilty to a charge of selling food containing extraneous matter - the chemical sodium hydroxide - that caused injury, the Southland Times newspaper said.
Prosecutor Sarah McKenzie told Queenstown District Court that the two women were taken to a hospital after drinking the liquid last July, the newspaper reported.
Customer Sarah Ferguson had ordered a glass of “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine from Queenstown’s Old Man Rock Cafe, owned by Chico’s Restaurant Ltd.
She spat out the liquid when she experienced a burning sensation on her lips and mouth.
Cafe worker Bethany Sim offered to test the drink and suffered a similar reaction.
“A check by cafe management indicated that a mulled wine container had unfortunately been filled with dishwashing detergent,” McKenzie told the court.
An investigation showed the two liquids had been mixed up after 5.2 gallons of dishwashing liquid was delivered in a container formerly used to hold “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine.
The court heard Sim suffered burns and possible scaring of her throat and esophagus from the chemical mix.
Under New Zealand’s no-fault accident law, victims do not sue for damages. Instead, treatment costs and income loss are met by the nation’s Accident Compensation scheme.
The company will be sentenced next month and faces a possible fine.
“A soft, bubbly beverage, with strong notes of soap, detergent, and industrial cleanser, lingering on the palette with a delightful aftertaste of shampoo.”
Also, why wasnt the wine kept in, oh, I dont know, wine bottles. That are corked? Which are opened table side?
She ordered a glass of wine. Wine in glasses is usually delivered in the glass, not from the bottle at the table. It is generally a bottle kept at the bar or a back of house area and poured.
Yep, this is a stupid mistake that is so easily avoidable on so many levels it is ridiculous that it even happened. But that’s why the wine wouldn’t have been served at the table like that.
Oh. And there are wines that are moving away from corks and have screw tops now. Not many, and not generally the finer wines, but it is becoming more wide spread.
Also, not all cleaning supplies are ‘thick and goopy’ like household dih soap. I could very easily see one being A: watery and B: passing visually as something boozy. My guess is that the ‘dishwashing detergent’ may have actually been Quatrenary Sanitizer, or ‘Quat’, which is often colored a deep, rich indigo/purple.
Also, why wasnt the wine kept in, oh, I dont know, wine bottles. That are corked? Which are opened table side?
She ordered a glass of wine. Wine in glasses is usually delivered in the glass, not from the bottle at the table. It is generally a bottle kept at the bar or a back of house area and poured.
Yep, this is a stupid mistake that is so easily avoidable on so many levels it is ridiculous that it even happened. But that’s why the wine wouldn’t have been served at the table like that.
Oh. And there are wines that are moving away from corks and have screw tops now. Not many, and not generally the finer wines, but it is becoming more wide spread.
She ordered a glass of wine, not a bottle. In a bar or cafe you keep an opened bottle of wine behind the bar and pour glasses as they are asked for, opening bottles as needed. I presume they don’t sell a lot of mulled wine so it’s entirely possible that the bartender at the time had never seen the bottle opened before.
And yes, many wines use screw tops now (although never the really good ones) however once a bottle is opened the cork is usually jammed back in the neck (we use vacuum seals in my pub which are great), it’s possible that’s how the bottle was resealed.
We also use a pub glasswash. Like a dishwasher but you need to keep adding detergent (dark pink) and glass shine (clear) every few washes. The detergent you couldn’t mistake for wine but it is dark pink and liquid, not gloopy like a commercial washing up liquid. I’m sure you get similar things in darker colours.
However, my one niggle with this is the smell. No detergent smells like wine, let alone mulled wine which has a very noticeable, spicy scent. And is served warm. Did they warm the mulled wine? If they did I find it hard to believe they couldn’t notice the smell of hot washing liquid.
Unless it was somehow without scent, which is unbelievable. Even then, the barman (or girl) poured a glass and the punter actually raised it to drink, and nobody noticed the smell?
I just chalk it up to colossal inattentiveness on everyone’s part. I can see the stuff not being strongly scented, or perhaps even ‘floral’ scented, which might well be mistaken for an exceptional bouquet.
I’m still leaning towards my Quat theory. That stuff *is* deep purple, and functionally scentless, plus you’d generally keep a large jug of it handy in the back. It’d also cause that burning sensation, undiluted.
An investigation showed the two liquids had been mixed up after 5.2 gallons of dishwashing liquid was delivered in a container formerly used to hold “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine.
Sounds like ‘wine bottles’ never come into it. The house-wine is usually in a big caterers bend wine cask, which seems to be the case here ie, 5.2 gallons is 20 litres.
Wine in a soda bottle????? High end indeed. I think this cafe needs to be a bit smarter and LABEL THE CLEANER!!!!! I use a formula scoop for draino crystals, but I wrote DRAINO on the handle so I will never use it for food. Any time I use a container or utensil for something other than what it is originally for I label it. I put baby cereal in an empty formula canister and still labeled it. Yes, I can easily tell the difference, but I still labeled it. It would only be logical to label a bottle when you put a caustic (right?) liquid in it.
I read another article on it(from NZ) and they said they did put another label over the wine label, but it just didnt get noticed. If it’s a 20 litre container, I can see how it might be missed(size ratio , etc).
The answer is, of course, not to put any poisons in food containers. In fact, I remember in Australia all stuff like that had special containers, ribbed edges, child proof caps etc.
I’m sure their fine will get them to change their ways.
An investigation showed the two liquids had been mixed up after 5.2 gallons of dishwashing liquid was delivered in a container formerly used to hold “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine.
Sounds like ‘wine bottles’ never come into it. The house-wine is usually in a big caterers bend wine cask, which seems to be the case here ie, 5.2 gallons is 20 litres.
“Ahh.. yes.. Last Thursday. An excellent vintage. Would you care to smell the bottle cap, sir? And would madame wish to upgrade her entree to the combo meal?”
And here I thought Box Wine was as low as respectable vintners would stoop (despite it actually being a *good* way to store wine).
Wine boxes are a good way of storing wine temporarily but it really does need a cork to breathe. However, the cheaper wines that are usually the house wine nowadays seem to always use plastic corks so for a house wine, where the bottle is usually emptied within an hour of opening, a wine box is about the same in terms of quality of storage, easier and faster to pour and space-saving.
Yes, a wine bottle is good only for the breathing bit of it, but frankly, a box/bladder combo is airtight, lightproof, and generally an ideal situation for keeping wine. You can pour off as much wine as you want without letting air in to react with the wine, ensuring that the last pour will be as good as the first one.. However good that happens to be.
My friend’s mom puts the dish soap in a pretty bottle b/c she wants it to look nice since it’s left on the counter. She uses a few old bottles that she found at a garage sale, but I wouldn’t wonder that it was alcohol...especially after I poured it.
“Yeah, we used to use old bottles, but then we found out that the hospital was just throwing away these old catheter bags..”
Reminds me of an advertisement (I read it in Reader’s Digest): From a contractor company: “We flush septic tanks. We fill pools. Not with the same truck.”
