1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal
Encyclopedia
The 1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal involved a limited number of Austria
n wineries
that had illegally adulterated
their wine
s using the toxic substance diethylene glycol
(a primary ingredient in some brands of anti-freeze) to make the wines appear sweeter and more full-bodied in the style of late harvest wine
s. Many of these Austrian wine
s were exported to Germany
, some of them in bulk to be bottled at large-scale German bottling facilities. At these facilities, some Austrian wines were illegally blended into German wine
s by the importers, resulting in diethylene glycol ending up in some bulk-bottled German wines as well.
The scandal was uncovered by German wine laboratories performing quality controls on wines sold in Germany, and immediately made headlines around the world. The affected wines were immediately withdrawn from the market. A number of people involved in the scandal were sentenced to prison or heavy fines in Austria and Germany. Although potentially health-damaging in larger quantities, no recorded instances of injuries from the consumption of the adulterated wines are known.
The short-term effect of the scandal was a complete collapse of Austrian wine exports and a total loss of reputation of the entire Austrian wine industry, with significant adverse effects on the reputation of German wines as well. The long-term effect was that the Austrian wine industry focused their production on other wine types than previously, primarily dry white wines instead of sweet wines, and increasingly targeted a higher market segment
, but it took the Austrian wine industry over a decade to recover. Much stricter wine law
s were also enacted by Austria.
The traditional sweet wines of Germany and Austria are produced from late harvest grapes, some of them affected by noble rot
, and labelled in a hierarchy of Prädikat designations from Kabinett
to Trockenbeerenauslese
depending on the ripeness of the grapes. Although sweet reserve (blending a wine with its own must
) was allowed for the production of semi-sweet wines, no external sources of sugar were allowed for any wines with a Prädikat designation. Thus, the production of wines at higher Prädikat levels tends to vary from year to year depending on vintage
conditions, and all wines with higher designations sell at a premium price. As the sweet wines were more favoured at the time of the scandal than they have been in the 1990s and 2000s, and since the Prädikat designations were almost universally recognized throughout the German-speaking countries, a cheap Auslese
or Beerenauslese
was often identified as a "bargain" by many German consumers. Many of the cheap sweet wines exported from Austria were blends from different grape varieties, and several of them did not carry any varietal
designations, in contrast to the more expensive Prädikat wines of Germany, which often were produced from Riesling
grapes.
Some Austrian exporters had entered into long-term contracts with supermarket chains to supply large quantities of wine at a specified quality level in terms of Prädikat. Apparently these producers ran into problems in some weak vintages, where much of the grape harvest did not reach sufficient ripeness levels. At the levels of ripeness that were reached, the wines would be less sweet, less full-bodied and more acidic. One vintage plagued by these problems in Austria was 1982. It is believed that when this led to insufficient quantities of wine being available to fulfill the contracts, some producers started to search for methods, including illegal ones, to "correct" the wines. By itself, simple sweetening (also illegal) would not necessarily do the job, since it would not sufficiently correct the taste profile of the wine. By using diethylene glycol, it was possible to affect both the impression of sweetness and the body of the wine. German wine chemists have stated that it is unlikely that an individual winemaker of a small winery had sufficient chemical knowledge to devise the scheme, implying that the recipe must have been drawn up by a knowledgeable wine chemist consulting for a large-scale producer.
, although ethylene glycol
is more common for that application. Adulteration of products with diethylene glycol has led to thousands of deaths world wide since the first recorded case: the Elixir sulfanilamide incident in 1937. Most of the recalled wines contained up to a few grams of DEG per litre (and many only a fraction of a gram), which meant that dozens of bottles would have to be consumed in a limited period of time to reach the lethal dose of approximately 40 grams. However, in one record-setting wine (a 1981 Welschriesling
Beerenauslese from Burgenland
) 48 grams per litre was detected, which meant that the consumption of a single bottle could have been lethal. Also, long-term consumption of DEG is known to damage the kidney
, liver
and brain
.
Auslese from a supermarket in Stuttgart
, analysed on June 27, 1985. Domestic wine fraud involving illegal sweetening had occurred earlier in Germany, and had led to investigations and prosecution of the winemakers involved. What made the 1985 finds very different was that a toxic compound had been used, and subsequent sampling indicated that a significant number of different bottlings were part of this toxic adulteration scheme. Therefore, unlike cases of simple sweetening, the 1985 DEG findings immediately took the proportion of a full-scale scandal requiring action by federal authorities in both Germany and Austria. On July 9, the Federal Ministry of Health
in Bonn
issued an official health warning against the consumption of Austrian wines. The findings immediately made headlines in German media, and from there were cabled out throughout the world.
From a pre-1985 level of around 45 million liters per year, exports immediately fell to one-tenth their previous level, or around 4.4 million liters in 1986. They then stayed at approximately the same level until 1989, and were slightly higher in period 1990-1997, but still well below pre-1985 levels. Not until 2001 did the export volume, at just over 50 million liters, match the old level. It thus took the Austrian wine industry 15 years to regain its former position in terms of export volume, despite optimistic predictions from some quarters in Austria that it would all be forgotten in other countries in one year's time.
Many of the adulterated wines were found to originate in Wagram in Lower Austria
, where a consulting wine chemist was prosecuted. One of the convicted Wagram winemakers, Karl Grill, proprietor of Firma Gebrüder Grill, committed suicide after being sentenced.
A stricter wine law was enacted by the Parliament of Austria
on August 29, 1985. Having seen the immediate collapse of Austrian wine exports, the Austrian government rushed this legislation through parliament in order for it to be in effect before the 1985 harvest.
In Germany, following a lengthy investigation, six former leading employees of the wholesale dealer and bottler Pieroth were sentenced to fines of one million Deutsche Mark by the Landgericht in Koblenz
in April 1996.
Many other legal actions took place over the coming years in Germany. The bottling firm Pieroth fought a legal action in the administrative court
s in order to try to establish that the Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health, Heiner Geißler
(CDU
) had exceeded his authority when his ministry had issued a blacklist containing all wines that had been found to contain DEG, and naming the bottler in each case. (Incidentally, one of the owners of the Pieroth firm was another prominent CDU politician, Elmar Pieroth, who was a senator in Berlin.) The case went through all three tiers of the administrative courts, and was finally settled on October 18, 1990, when the Federal Administrative Court of Germany
ruled against Pieroth and found that the minister had the right to issue the list. Pieroth's actions, which did not earn the company any sympathy with the public, were probably not meant as a measure to allow the further selling of adulterated wine, but as an attempt to put Pieroth in a position to recover money from customers who had refused to pay their outstanding bills following the scandal. Other courts had ruled in civil law
proceedings that deliveries of wines found to contain DEG were a form of non-fulfillment of a purchase contract that removed any obligation to pay, but that customers still had to pay if they only suspected that a wine contained DEG, and the wine was subsequently cleared of suspicion. Thus, the legal status of the blacklist was a crucial element in the many contract disputes.
plants. In the end, the wine was destroyed by being poured into the oven
s of a cement
plant as a cooling agent instead of water.
`
under the rhyming title Zum Wohl, Glykol - "Cheers, glycol". Glykol was also announced to be the 1985 word of the year
in Germany.
In The Simpsons
episode The Crepes of Wrath
, two Frenchmen
Bart
is staying with are arrested after putting antifreeze in wine and making Bart drink it.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n wineries
Winery
A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, bottling lines, laboratories, and large expanses of...
that had illegally adulterated
Wine fraud
Wine fraud is a form of fraud in which wines are sold to a customer illicitly, usually having the customer spend more money than the product is worth, or causing sickness due to harmful chemicals being mixed into the wine...
their wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
s using the toxic substance diethylene glycol
Diethylene glycol
Diethylene glycol is an organic compound with the formula 2O. It is a colorless, practically odorless, poisonous, and hygroscopic liquid with a sweetish taste. It is miscible in water, alcohol, ether, acetone, and ethylene glycol. DEG is a widely used solvent...
(a primary ingredient in some brands of anti-freeze) to make the wines appear sweeter and more full-bodied in the style of late harvest wine
Late harvest wine
Late harvest is a term applied to wines made from grapes left on the vine longer than usual. Late harvest is usually an indication of a sweet dessert wine, such as late harvest Riesling. Late harvest grapes are often more similar to raisins, but have been naturally dehydrated while on the vine...
s. Many of these Austrian wine
Austrian wine
Austrian wines are mostly dry white wines with some luscious dessert wines made around the Neusiedler See. About 30% of the wines are red, made from Blaufränkisch , Pinot Noir and locally bred varieties such as Zweigelt...
s were exported to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, some of them in bulk to be bottled at large-scale German bottling facilities. At these facilities, some Austrian wines were illegally blended into German wine
German wine
German wine is primarily produced in the west of Germany, along the river Rhine and its tributaries, with the oldest plantations going back to the Roman era. Approximately 60 percent of the German wine production is situated in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where 6 of the 13 regions ...
s by the importers, resulting in diethylene glycol ending up in some bulk-bottled German wines as well.
The scandal was uncovered by German wine laboratories performing quality controls on wines sold in Germany, and immediately made headlines around the world. The affected wines were immediately withdrawn from the market. A number of people involved in the scandal were sentenced to prison or heavy fines in Austria and Germany. Although potentially health-damaging in larger quantities, no recorded instances of injuries from the consumption of the adulterated wines are known.
The short-term effect of the scandal was a complete collapse of Austrian wine exports and a total loss of reputation of the entire Austrian wine industry, with significant adverse effects on the reputation of German wines as well. The long-term effect was that the Austrian wine industry focused their production on other wine types than previously, primarily dry white wines instead of sweet wines, and increasingly targeted a higher market segment
Market segment
Market segmentation is a concept in economics and marketing. A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function...
, but it took the Austrian wine industry over a decade to recover. Much stricter wine law
Wine law
Wine laws are legislation regulating various aspects of production and sales of wine. The purpose of wine laws includes combating wine fraud, by means of regulated protected designations of origin, labelling practices and classification of wine, as well as regulating allowed additives and...
s were also enacted by Austria.
Background
At the time of the scandal, Germany was the most important export market for Austrian wine and had been so for a number of years, with an increasing trend. The Austrian wines exported to Germany were of a similar style to those produced by Germany itself, meaning semi-sweet and sweet white wines. However, much of these Austrian wines were focused on the low cost segment, and were priced lower than German wines at the corresponding level of sweetness.The traditional sweet wines of Germany and Austria are produced from late harvest grapes, some of them affected by noble rot
Noble rot
Noble rot is the benevolent form of a grey fungus, Botrytis cinerea, affecting wine grapes. Infestation by Botrytis requires moist conditions, and if the weather stays wet, the malevolent form, "grey rot", can destroy crops of grapes...
, and labelled in a hierarchy of Prädikat designations from Kabinett
Kabinett
Kabinett , or sometimes Kabinettwein , is a German language wine term for a wine which is made from fully ripened grapes of the main harvest, typically picked in September, and are usually made in a light style...
to Trockenbeerenauslese
Trockenbeerenauslese
Trockenbeerenauslese is a German language wine term for an intensely sweet dessert wine-style wine....
depending on the ripeness of the grapes. Although sweet reserve (blending a wine with its own must
Must
Must is freshly pressed fruit juice that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit. The solid portion of the must is called pomace; it typically makes up 7%–23% of the total weight of the must. Making must is the first step in winemaking...
) was allowed for the production of semi-sweet wines, no external sources of sugar were allowed for any wines with a Prädikat designation. Thus, the production of wines at higher Prädikat levels tends to vary from year to year depending on vintage
Vintage
Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product . A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and...
conditions, and all wines with higher designations sell at a premium price. As the sweet wines were more favoured at the time of the scandal than they have been in the 1990s and 2000s, and since the Prädikat designations were almost universally recognized throughout the German-speaking countries, a cheap Auslese
Auslese
Auslese is a German language wine term for a late harvest wine and is a riper category than Spätlese in the Prädikatswein category of the Austrian and German wine classification. The grapes are picked from selected very ripe bunches in the autumn , and have to be hand picked...
or Beerenauslese
Beerenauslese
Beerenauslese is a German language wine term for a dessert wine-style late harvest wine. Beerenauslese is a category in the Prädikatswein category of the Austrian and German wine classifications, and is a category above Auslese. Beerenauslese wines, often called "BA" for short, are usually made...
was often identified as a "bargain" by many German consumers. Many of the cheap sweet wines exported from Austria were blends from different grape varieties, and several of them did not carry any varietal
Varietal
"Varietal" describes wines made primarily from a single named grape variety, and which typically displays the name of that variety on the wine label. Examples of grape varieties commonly used in varietal wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot...
designations, in contrast to the more expensive Prädikat wines of Germany, which often were produced from Riesling
Riesling
Riesling is a white grape variety which originated in the Rhine region of Germany. Riesling is an aromatic grape variety displaying flowery, almost perfumed, aromas as well as high acidity. It is used to make dry, semi-sweet, sweet and sparkling white wines. Riesling wines are usually varietally...
grapes.
Some Austrian exporters had entered into long-term contracts with supermarket chains to supply large quantities of wine at a specified quality level in terms of Prädikat. Apparently these producers ran into problems in some weak vintages, where much of the grape harvest did not reach sufficient ripeness levels. At the levels of ripeness that were reached, the wines would be less sweet, less full-bodied and more acidic. One vintage plagued by these problems in Austria was 1982. It is believed that when this led to insufficient quantities of wine being available to fulfill the contracts, some producers started to search for methods, including illegal ones, to "correct" the wines. By itself, simple sweetening (also illegal) would not necessarily do the job, since it would not sufficiently correct the taste profile of the wine. By using diethylene glycol, it was possible to affect both the impression of sweetness and the body of the wine. German wine chemists have stated that it is unlikely that an individual winemaker of a small winery had sufficient chemical knowledge to devise the scheme, implying that the recipe must have been drawn up by a knowledgeable wine chemist consulting for a large-scale producer.
Diethylene glycol
Diethylene glycol (DEG) was otherwise used as an industrial chemical or as antifreezeAntifreeze
Antifreeze is a freeze preventive used in internal combustion engines and other heat transfer applications, such as HVAC chillers and solar water heaters....
, although ethylene glycol
Ethylene glycol
Ethylene glycol is an organic compound widely used as an automotive antifreeze and a precursor to polymers. In its pure form, it is an odorless, colorless, syrupy, sweet-tasting liquid...
is more common for that application. Adulteration of products with diethylene glycol has led to thousands of deaths world wide since the first recorded case: the Elixir sulfanilamide incident in 1937. Most of the recalled wines contained up to a few grams of DEG per litre (and many only a fraction of a gram), which meant that dozens of bottles would have to be consumed in a limited period of time to reach the lethal dose of approximately 40 grams. However, in one record-setting wine (a 1981 Welschriesling
Welschriesling
Welschriesling is an ancient variety of white wine grape, unrelated to the Rhine Riesling, that is grown throughout Central Europe. The origin of Welschriesling is uncertain. The German name "Welschriesling" literally means 'Romanic Riesling', and most of the synonyms in Central Europe are...
Beerenauslese from Burgenland
Burgenland
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east...
) 48 grams per litre was detected, which meant that the consumption of a single bottle could have been lethal. Also, long-term consumption of DEG is known to damage the kidney
Kidney
The kidneys, organs with several functions, serve essential regulatory roles in most animals, including vertebrates and some invertebrates. They are essential in the urinary system and also serve homeostatic functions such as the regulation of electrolytes, maintenance of acid–base balance, and...
, liver
Liver
The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...
and brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
.
Discovery
The first wine discovered to contain DEG was a 1983 RüsterRust, Austria
----Rust is a city in Burgenland, Austria located at the shore of the Neusiedler See. Although it has only about 1,700 inhabitants, it is a Statutarstadt, as it was endowed with the rights of a free city by the Hungarian crown in 1681. As a Statutarstadt, it also forms its own administrative...
Auslese from a supermarket in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, analysed on June 27, 1985. Domestic wine fraud involving illegal sweetening had occurred earlier in Germany, and had led to investigations and prosecution of the winemakers involved. What made the 1985 finds very different was that a toxic compound had been used, and subsequent sampling indicated that a significant number of different bottlings were part of this toxic adulteration scheme. Therefore, unlike cases of simple sweetening, the 1985 DEG findings immediately took the proportion of a full-scale scandal requiring action by federal authorities in both Germany and Austria. On July 9, the Federal Ministry of Health
Federal Ministry of Health (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Health, is a ministry of the German federal government...
in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
issued an official health warning against the consumption of Austrian wines. The findings immediately made headlines in German media, and from there were cabled out throughout the world.
Market consequences
From mid-July 1985, it was almost impossible to sell Austrian wine on any export market. Some countries introduced a ban on the import and sale of all Austrian wines, and in many other countries Austrian wines were removed from shelves by wine dealers themselves.From a pre-1985 level of around 45 million liters per year, exports immediately fell to one-tenth their previous level, or around 4.4 million liters in 1986. They then stayed at approximately the same level until 1989, and were slightly higher in period 1990-1997, but still well below pre-1985 levels. Not until 2001 did the export volume, at just over 50 million liters, match the old level. It thus took the Austrian wine industry 15 years to regain its former position in terms of export volume, despite optimistic predictions from some quarters in Austria that it would all be forgotten in other countries in one year's time.
Legal consequences
In the weeks following the breaking of the scandal, several dozens of wine producers and wine dealers were arrested by Austrian authorities. The first prison sentence, of one and a half years, followed in mid-October.Many of the adulterated wines were found to originate in Wagram in Lower Austria
Lower Austria
Lower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...
, where a consulting wine chemist was prosecuted. One of the convicted Wagram winemakers, Karl Grill, proprietor of Firma Gebrüder Grill, committed suicide after being sentenced.
A stricter wine law was enacted by the Parliament of Austria
Parliament of Austria
In the Parliament of Austria is vested the legislative power of the Republic of Austria. The institution consists of two chambers,* the National Council and* the Federal Council ....
on August 29, 1985. Having seen the immediate collapse of Austrian wine exports, the Austrian government rushed this legislation through parliament in order for it to be in effect before the 1985 harvest.
In Germany, following a lengthy investigation, six former leading employees of the wholesale dealer and bottler Pieroth were sentenced to fines of one million Deutsche Mark by the Landgericht in Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...
in April 1996.
Many other legal actions took place over the coming years in Germany. The bottling firm Pieroth fought a legal action in the administrative court
Administrative court
Greece, as a civil law country has administrative courts. The establishment of those courts can be found in article 94 of the Constitution of the Hellenic Republic 1975, as revised in 2001. The administrative courts are composed from districts Courts of First Instance, district Courts of Appeal and...
s in order to try to establish that the Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health, Heiner Geißler
Heiner Geißler
Heiner Geißler is a German politician with the Christian Democratic Union party.Geißler studied law and philosophy in Munich and Tübingen, where he graduated in 1960....
(CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
) had exceeded his authority when his ministry had issued a blacklist containing all wines that had been found to contain DEG, and naming the bottler in each case. (Incidentally, one of the owners of the Pieroth firm was another prominent CDU politician, Elmar Pieroth, who was a senator in Berlin.) The case went through all three tiers of the administrative courts, and was finally settled on October 18, 1990, when the Federal Administrative Court of Germany
Federal Administrative Court of Germany
The Federal Administrative Court is one of the five federal supreme courts of Germany. It is the court of the last resort for generally all cases of administrative law, mainly disputes between citizens and the state...
ruled against Pieroth and found that the minister had the right to issue the list. Pieroth's actions, which did not earn the company any sympathy with the public, were probably not meant as a measure to allow the further selling of adulterated wine, but as an attempt to put Pieroth in a position to recover money from customers who had refused to pay their outstanding bills following the scandal. Other courts had ruled in civil law
Civil law (area)
Civil law in continental law is a branch of law which is the general part of private law.The basis for civil law lies in a civil code. Before enacting of codes, civil law could not be distinguished from private law...
proceedings that deliveries of wines found to contain DEG were a form of non-fulfillment of a purchase contract that removed any obligation to pay, but that customers still had to pay if they only suspected that a wine contained DEG, and the wine was subsequently cleared of suspicion. Thus, the legal status of the blacklist was a crucial element in the many contract disputes.
Destruction of the wine
As a consequence of the scandal, a total of 270,000 hectoliter of wine (corresponding to 36 million bottles or seven months' worth of Austria's total wine exports at the pre-1985 level) had to be destroyed by the German authorities, which had confiscated or otherwise collected the wine. Doing this in an environmentally acceptable way proved to be something of a challenge, because DEG was incompatible with sewage treatmentSewage treatment
Sewage treatment, or domestic wastewater treatment, is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household sewage, both runoff and domestic. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove physical, chemical and biological contaminants...
plants. In the end, the wine was destroyed by being poured into the oven
Oven
An oven is a thermally insulated chamber used for the heating, baking or drying of a substance. It is most commonly used for cooking. Kilns, and furnaces are special-purpose ovens...
s of a cement
Cement
In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...
plant as a cooling agent instead of water.
`
Satirical references
The wine scandal has been the subject of many satirical references to Austrian wine, both inside Austria, in Germany and beyond, and lasting long after 1985. Shortly after the scandal, the Styrian bard Volker Schöbitz composed a polkaPolka
The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...
under the rhyming title Zum Wohl, Glykol - "Cheers, glycol". Glykol was also announced to be the 1985 word of the year
Word of the year
The word of the year, sometimes capitalized as Word of the Year and abbreviated WOTY or WotY, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year....
in Germany.
In The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
episode The Crepes of Wrath
The Crepes of Wrath
"The Crepes of Wrath" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons first season, and originally aired April 15, 1990. The episode was written by George Meyer, Sam Simon, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti, and was directed by Wes Archer and Milton Gray. In the episode, Bart is sent to France on a student...
, two Frenchmen
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Bart
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
is staying with are arrested after putting antifreeze in wine and making Bart drink it.