in news: snipped-for-privacy@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
The 1985 Austrian so-called "anti-freeze" wine scandal is a true scandal, but it's about journalists, not winemakers. The additive that a handful of winemakers used was diethylene glycol, a sweet food additive that is not anti-freeze. _Ethylene_ glycol is anti-freeze and is poisonous. However, some people publicized the additive wrongly as ethylene glycol (after all, if they themselves don't know one glycol from another, how could it be important?). "Diethylene glycol is in fact less toxic than alcohol, so adding it actually made the wines less poisonous." (From Tom Stevenson, _New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia,_ Third edition 2001, ISBN 0789480395.) Amazingly, the link above repeats this same long-discredited error.
The actual addition of d.e.g. was illegal I believe, via wine-nomenclature and labeling laws, but not a health issue. I recall one interesting side story as that some of the adulterated Austrian wine surfaced under German labels, via blending I think (another wine-labeling violation).
I'm cross-posting to AFW where this may belong (and where many knowledgeable people read, including from Austria).
Cheers -- Max