Apollo Bay Distillery’s gin range, with SS Casino Dry Gin second from right. Photo: Distillery Facebook page
Given the large number of distilleries around Australia that hastily switched from gin or rum to producing hand sanitiser, it was probably inevitable. An incorrect labelling issue has led to a Victorian distillery selling a small batch of gin which is actually hand sanitiser.
Apollo Bay Distillery has now issued a product safety recall for SS Casino Gin bottles. The affected bottles, nine in total, were sold between Friday and Sunday night at the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse’s Tastes of the Region shop.
At the time of writing, six bottles have already been traced and a spokesperson for the distillery said they were confident that the remainder would be found quickly.
“It’s a very localised issue – it’s only nine bottles that have been affected,” the spokesperson said. “If anyone did purchase it (a bottle), we encourage them to come in for a refund and we’ll be giving them the proper product.”
The way to identify the affected bottles is that they do not have a shrink-wrap seal. In all other respects, the bottles like the normal SS Casino Gin product.
The gin bottles were actually filled with hand sanitiser containing 1.45 per cent glycerol and 0.125 per cent hydrogen peroxide.
Consumption may cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, bloating, vomiting, thirst and diarrhoea. One member of the public has already reportedly drunk some of the mixture and said she felt nauseous.
However, consuming the mixture will not be fatal.
On its Facebook page, the distillery has apologised several times for the incident.
“As a small business we’re hugely sorry this has occurred … we are so sorry this even happened. We are confident we can rectify the situation and will refund those who purchased incorrectly and replace their product free of charge,” one of its posts read.
In general, social media users have been forgiving of what has been described as human error and have even made light of the situation.
“Oops haha! Might need an extra bit of tonic to wash this down,” joked one post.
Another user, presumably directing the comment at another family member, said: “Explains why nan got so wild at dinner.”