Woman Dies After Drinking Single Sip from Bottle of Wine Laced with MDMA

A woman in Belgium died after taking one sip of wine from a bottle that had been laced with MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstacy.

The 41-year-old from Puurs, Belgium took one sip of red wine from the Dutch brand Black & Bianco in December, The Guardian reported Thursday.

The woman, who has not been identified, reportedly stopped drinking the wine, from a 2016 bottle of red merlot cabernet sauvignon, after just one sip because of a bad taste — but that was enough to cause her to collapse not long after.

She was taken to the hospital and died five days later from the amount of the drug she had consumed, the BBC reported.

Black & Bianco issued a statement on the incident, explaining that the company only recently became aware of the woman’s death as part of a criminal investigation.

The company also stated that the bottle had been manipulated and did not have an original Black & Bianco cork.

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According to photos shared by the company, the brand’s corks are black and include the words “Black & Bianco,” but the cork from the bottle of this woman was beige and had no branding.

Black & Bianco also said that it had checked its inventory of the red merlot cabernet sauvignon 2016 as a “precautionary measure” and expressed that customers can also check their own bottles by making sure it has the correct kind of cork, and to alert authorities if any evidence of tampering is found.

The woman’s sister told a local newspaper that the woman who died “was 100 percent against drugs.”

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“She was completely unacceptable with people who used drugs or walked around under the influence,” she said, according to The Guardian. “We also do not understand where that bottle came from. She only drank one sip.”

Black & Bianco said that the bottle the woman drank from is only available in Belgium online, but the BBC reported that she worked at a store that sold items that had been confiscated from the country’s federal finance service.

However, a spokesperson for the finance ministry told the outlet that the store no longer sells food or drink to individuals and that employees are not allowed to take anything home.

from PEOPLE.com https://people.com/health/woman-dies-single-sip-of-wine-laced-with-mdma/