The French Government will be paying to destroy nearly 80 million gallons of wine - that's enough to fill 100 Olympic-size swimming pools. This comes out to just over a gallon per person for every man, woman and child in the country.
The country says it has an excess supply, so it plans to distill the wine into pure alcohol. It will then be used for other products, like cleaning supplies and perfume.
The venture will cost the country around $216 million US dollars to complete, but officials say it does make sense economically. Wine is getting more costly to produce, and the French are consuming less of it than in past years.
As a result, some winemakers end up with a surplus, but can't charge enough for it to turn a profit. France's Ministry of Agriculture says the goal of destroying the excess supply is to prevent a price collapse, and to give wine producers a source of revenue again.
So, they cannot export it to countries that want to drink wine?
ReplyDeleteWhat a waste of time, materials, work, and money to destroy this surplus wine.
Heltau
Having trouble with this "surplus wine" concept. It's a self-correcting problem.
DeletePeople no longer can afford to drink wine due to high taxes, so tax money will be used to flush it?
ReplyDeleteOnly socialists can come up with 'solutions' like that.
Won't the destruction of the wine actually raise the price? Law of supply and demand. And besides, fine wines are aged. Aren't they? Why destroy, store and sell later. Sounds like some elite money grubbing BS to me.
ReplyDeleteSounds like what they do/did with milk production in the US. Some they made into government cheese, but they dumped a lot of it down the drain, poured out on the ground.
ReplyDelete