Italy Has a Public Wine Fountain that Dispenses Free Booze 24/7

(Via Dora Sarchese)

Italy is a very nice place that is beautiful and covered with castles and statues of naked people, and now it has gone from nice to downright magical, because one city just installed a 24/7 wine fountain.

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A fountain that pours wine all day sounds like the sort of thing a person normally has to arrange a miracle for, but this one is available thanks to some engineering, and an Italian village that really loves its wine.

According to The Local, the wine fountain debuted on Sunday in Caldari di Ortona in Abruzzo.  The city is a popular spot for pilgrims traveling to see the remains of St. Thomas, which are kept in a cathedral in Ortona. Now it will probably also be a popular spot for pilgrims who just really want to see a fountain that pours wine.

The Ortona fountain will dispense wine every day, and it will be free to visitors, though organizers are quick to say that the fountain is not intended for “drunkards or louts.” Visitors can drink the wine, but security will intervene if someone attempts to just stick her head under the spigot and leave her mouth open for a few hours like Homer Simpson eating doughnuts.

The fountain was set up by the Dora Sarchese winery and it looks like a giant barrel, but inside there is a stone fountain with a button. Push that button, and the magic happens.

“The wine fountain is a welcome, the wine fountain is poetry,” Dora Sarchese said on its Facebook page. The wine might be poetry, but it’s also a locally produced red wine that pairs well with … honestly, nobody cares. It’s free and it comes out of a fountain. What could be more fun than that?

This is not actually the world’s first wine fountain, probably because the first time anyone built a fountain, someone looked at it and said, “That’s nice! Now, can we fill it with booze instead of water?” Venice has a big wine fountain in St. Mark’s Square during Carnival, but that’s just for the festival. This one is permanent, so there’s plenty of time to start gathering frequent filer miles and telling your friends how badly you want to make a religious pilgrimage to see the bones of St. Thomas.