Image by getty images

Despite complaints from anti-fascist groups, wine bottles featuring Adolf Hitler will remain on sale for the time being in the Italian city of Remini.

Mayor Andrea Grassi said his hands were tied when it comes to regulating the products, The Times of Israel reported.

The wine comes from Italian winemaker Vina Lunardelli’s cult “Historical Series” collection, which depicts dictators ranging from Napoleon to Hitler. The Hitler series, titled “Der Fuhrer,” includes both pictures of the dictator and Nazi slogans. The company has previously stated that the wines were meant as “joke gifts.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Gnassi said that he has received complaints previously over the bottles. However, he claimed that he lacks a larger framework to address such concerns: Without national legislation regulating fascist products, municipalities that attempted direct action against such products have been reprimanded by courts, which ruled in the traders’ favor.

“We receive reports like this at least five to six times a year,” Gnassi told The Times of Israel. “As long as a new law is not approved, all attempts at [action by the municipality] can achieve nothing.”

Lunardelli’s “Historical Series” products have faced controversy since their creation in 1995. The Forward wrote about the Hitler and Mussolini wines in 2010, an American couple complained about the wines in 2012 and the Simon Wiesenthal Center called for a boycott in 2013.

Despite these multiple objections, the company’s website says that about half of their wine production is devoted to creating the series, called “cult objects among collectors.”

Contact Juliana Kaplan at [email protected] or on Twitter, @julianamkaplan

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount