Austrian Doctor Finds Hitler-Themed Wine On Holiday and Did Nazi That Coming

Conventional wine marketing wisdom would say that using one of the most reviled and wicked men in modern history to sell your buttery chards and oaky cabs is a mistake. We call all assume that it's a remarkably terrible idea to put an image of Adolf Hitler on a bottle of wine to sell it.

Still, Italian brand Vini Lunardelli has been selling Nazi-themed wines since the 1990s, along with labels featuring other ignoble figures such as Rommel, Mussolini, Stalin, and Tito, among other historical figures such as Marx and Trotsky. The labels consist of historical imagery with phrases such as “Der Fuhrer” (The leader) and “Blut und Ehre” (Blood and Honor). The wine bottles are otherwise unremarkable design-wise except for the obvious shock value.

Vini Lunardelli’s controversial wine labels have come up from time to time. They resurfaced again last week, with Austrian news site Heute reporting the account of a cosmetic surgeon on holiday outraged upon seeing bottles of wine sporting Hitler’s visage.

In an email to Vice News, Winemaker Andrea Lunardelli said he is not a Nazi and would discontinue the line in 2023 after Lunardelli takes over the operation from his father. However, Lunardelli wants to make it clear that his departure wasn't the result of getting forced out by people offended by using genocidal warmongers to hock wine.

“Whoever buys [the Hitler wine] is a collector, remembers history, or wants nationalism against the current policies of multinationals…not against Jews,” Lunardelli told Vice News. Disdain for multinationals and globalists is at the core of many far-right philosophies and often a dog whistle for anti-Semitism.