Italian winery Vini Lunardelli features deliberately provocative images on its labels, such as topless ladies, famous fascists, and photos of Hitler. That’s the way it’s been for twenty years, apparently, and the company’s current portfolio has now grown to “about 30 Nazi-themed labels.” Citing pretty much clear-cut anti-Semitism, however, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on distributors to stop carrying Lunardelli wine, and the son of the company’s owner has gotten defensive. “It’s pretty absurd because Hitler was a teetotaler,” he says, adding, “most people buy the bottles as a joke.” It’s unclear how many, if any, go to Indonesia’s homey Nazi café, but Lunardelli moves 20,000 bottles of Hitler wine each year, or about 80 percent of its output. Alessandro Lunardelli says his wine is so hilarious that he suspects hundreds of cases are smuggled over the border each year into Germany and Austria, where it’s illegal, you know, because it makes total sense to break several international laws just to have a good laugh. [NYT, Related, Earlier]
