A Portuguese winemaker has been left with some blushes after flooding a small village with more than two millions litres of red wine.

Footage circulating online shows the streets of São Lorenco de Bairro running red with an estimated 2.3 million litres of wine after storage tanks at the local Levira Distillery burst on Sunday (local time).

“We assume full responsibility for the costs associated with cleaning and repairing the damage, having teams do so immediately,” it said in a statement.

“We are committed to resolving this situation as quickly as possible.”

No injuries were reported from Sunday’s alcoholic flash flood. But Levira said some wine may have entered the basement of at least one home, according to Portuguese news reports.

It also triggered a local environmental alert as the Anadia Fire Department did all it could to divert the wine so it did not contaminate the nearby Certima River.

The flood happened with two of Levira’s tanks burst, sending the red wine in a deluge down a hilly street that runs through São Lorenco de Bairro. The town, which is about 220 kilometres north of Lisbon, has a population of about 2000 people.

The distillery said its excess storage was due to the Portuguese government’s response to a wine surplus in Europe, caused by decreasing demand. It said the oversupply was a crisis.

Levira Distillery said wine-soaked soil would be taken to a special treatment plant.

-with agencies