“I was just about to have a shower but when I turned on the water, a liquid came out that looked like wine,” a local resident called Veronica told the Italian press.

“My first thought was that it was a problem with the boiler but then I noticed the smell. It was Lambrusco.”

Staff at the winery noticed the mix-up after about an hour and quickly turned off the supply, but not before around 1,000 litres of premium Lambrusco Grasparossa Castelvetro DOP had been piped into local homes.

“The staff intervened fairly quickly, much to the disappointment of the locals, some of whom had started bottling it,” Luisa Malaguti, a representative of the company, told The Telegraph.

“People are talking about it as ‘the miracle of Settecani’ and comparing it to the story of Jesus turning water into wine.”

The reality was more prosaic, she said.

“The problem was traced to the malfunction of a valve. The pressure of the wine was greater than that of the water and the wine flooded into the public water network.”

Founded in 1923, the winery produces a million bottles of Lambrusco each year and the loss of 1,000 litres was “not serious”, said Ms Malaguti.

The company describes its Lambrusco Grasparossa Castelvetro DOP wine as “round, full-bodied, crisp, fruity; an explosion of ripe red fruit, persistent to the palate, fresh and enveloping.”

Fabrizio Amorotti, the winery’s commercial manager, said: “There was no impact on people’s health. We apologise for the inconvenience, even though it was enjoyed by many people. Several locals called us to tell us what happened and to say that they were busily bottling the wine.”