There’s a Free, 24-Hour Wine Fountain in Italy

In a perfect world, water fountains would bear not lowly H20 but a never-ending stream of pinot noir, spouting forth at a perfect 60 degrees. In Italy, that rose-tinted vision has more or less become a reality: A vineyard in the Abruzzo region is now home to a fountain that dispenses locally-made wine to the public for free, 24 glorious hours a day, the Local reports.

The fontana del vino, as Italians refer to it, is located at the Dora Sarchese Vineyard in the town of Caldari di Ortona. The fountain, which poured its first glasses of red wine last Sunday for a huge crowd, is not intended to be a hangout for cheap drunks, but rather a roadside attraction where religious pilgrims can quench their thirst. As the Local explains, it’s located along “a popular pilgrimage route, the Cammino di San Tommaso”; each year, thousands of Italians travel 150 miles or so east from Rome to visit Ortona, where the body of the disciple Thomas are said to be kept.

Nonetheless, its picturesque location, housed in what looks like a gigantic wine cask, is already proving a popular Instagram subject.

Italy isn’t the only nation making leaps forward in the area of alcohol delivery systems: The world’s first underground beer pipeline debuted last month in Bruges, Belgium. Several years in the making, it carries beer from one of the city’s biggest brewers to its bottling facility a couple miles away at a rate of 12,000 gallons per hour.

• The First ‘Wine Fountain’ Just Opened in Italy — and It’s Free [Local.it]
• World’s First Beer Pipeline Finally Turns on the Taps in Belgium [E]
• More Wine News [E]