Italian 'Hitler wine' leaves bad taste with tourists
A Norwegian couple were "astonished" after popping into a shop in Rimini in search of a fine bottle of Italian wine and instead of a pleasant vineyard image on the label, they were met with the face of Adolf Hitler.
Paret Håvard and Geysa Furulund said the German dictator’s image adorned several bottles, while a couple more were emblazoned with the face of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini.
"I heard that this wine is sold all over Italy, also in Rome. They sell it as a souvenir. It's a special wine for special people. I was astonished,” Håvard told The Local.
“I was surprised that there was a market for something like this, because I thought that even in Italy, the market couldn't be so big that it was economic to produce this kind of wine."
The bottles, which were placed on a shelf of dry goods instead of among other wines in the shop, were labelled ‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘Mein Fuhrer’, while others had a swastika sign.
"There can only be two kinds of people who are buying this wine: you have people who actually identify with these kinds of thoughts, and you have young people haven't lived through the Second World war, so they think it's funny, it is almost a joke," added Håvard.
Vini Lunardelli in Udine has been making the so-called ‘historical' wines since 1995, a range which is intended to "reflect the lives of famous people in Italian and world history, such as Che Guevara, Churchill, Francis Joseph, Gramsci, Hitler, Marx, Mussolini, Napoleon and Sissi,” according to a message on the company’s website. 
The company said the wines have “attracted a lot of attention from media around the world both for the originality of the idea and the quality of the product.”
Alessandro Lunardelli, the company’s owner, could not be reached for comment by The Local on Monday.
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Paret Håvard and Geysa Furulund said the German dictator’s image adorned several bottles, while a couple more were emblazoned with the face of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini.
"I heard that this wine is sold all over Italy, also in Rome. They sell it as a souvenir. It's a special wine for special people. I was astonished,” Håvard told The Local.
“I was surprised that there was a market for something like this, because I thought that even in Italy, the market couldn't be so big that it was economic to produce this kind of wine."
The bottles, which were placed on a shelf of dry goods instead of among other wines in the shop, were labelled ‘Adolf Hitler’ and ‘Mein Fuhrer’, while others had a swastika sign.
"There can only be two kinds of people who are buying this wine: you have people who actually identify with these kinds of thoughts, and you have young people haven't lived through the Second World war, so they think it's funny, it is almost a joke," added Håvard.
The company said the wines have “attracted a lot of attention from media around the world both for the originality of the idea and the quality of the product.”
Alessandro Lunardelli, the company’s owner, could not be reached for comment by The Local on Monday.
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