France will convert surplus wine into industrial alcohol

France plans to spend millions of euros to convert the came in industrial alcohol for products pharmacists and cosmetics in order to drain a huge surplus, the Agriculture Ministry said.

The world’s second largest wine producer after Italy, France has long been known as a nation of wine aficionados.

But vintners in the southwestern Bordeaux region say overproduction and falling domestic consumption of their more affordable brands have filled their cellars and left them with no place to store the fruits of their next harvest.

The Ministry of Agriculture announced Monday that it will allocate up to 160 million euros (US$170 million) to the distillation of this alcoholic beverage to obtain industrial alcohol.

In Bordeaux, winegrower Didier Cousiney said that spread across the sector, that amount would only be enough to help each small business for a couple of months.

Have “24 months late in our warehouses”said.

The agrarian unions of the Bordeaux region, which staged several protests, want compensation in exchange for the “uprooting of the land” from part of their vineyards. This would help reduce production and allow growers to use the space for other activities.

Cousiney and other winegrowers estimate that at least 15,000 hectares of vineyards (an area equivalent to 21,000 football fields) need to be uprooted across the region for the situation to change. They ask for compensation of 10,000 euros (US$10,720) per hectare.

The government last sponsored distilling in 2020, after global lockdowns due to COVID-19 caused restaurants and bars to close, and French wine exports plummeted.

It is estimated that around half a million people work in the wine industry in France, according to the national interprofessional wine commission.

If nothing is done, “we fear that between 100,000 and 150,000 jobs will be threatened in the next decade”warned in December the head of the commission, Bernard Farges.

Sales of red wine in French supermarkets fell 15% last year, according to the general association of viticulture. White and rosé wines were less affected, registering decreases of around 3% and 4%.

Jérôme Despey, winegrower and general secretary of the FNSEA agricultural union, said that this situation reflects a more general trend. 70 years ago, the French drank an average of 130 liters of wine per year, but today that figure has dropped to around 40 litres.

(With information from AFP)