The French government plans to spend €200 million (or about $216 million) to destroy excess wine in hopes of shoring up a struggling wine industry that is seeing changing consumption habits among younger drinkers.
...the government will be adding to the initial €160 million fund offered by the EU to purchase the surplus wine, according to Agence France-Presse news wire.
The wine will be destroyed to create industrial alcohol that can be sold to make items such as hand sanitizer, cleaning products, and perfume, according to the report.
— Read more in French government to spend $216 million to destroy excess wine as younger consumers drink less alcohol at Business Insider.
I’m guessing that most of this wine is of the grocery store boxed white and red wine type. But gosh, given some of the problems that EU member countries are facing, this seems like a crazy use of 160 million. I hope in the future, French wine makers can negotiate directly with companies that use the alcohol for something. Or, just ship it to the US, where some of us like grocery store boxed wine. 🙂
I think it’s a bigger problem than that…they are having similar pressures in Australia. The US does not have a glut, but they also have less demand than they used to. Interesting bit from a piece in Forbes:
“5.6. That’s how many liters of alcoholic drinks were sold per person in France in 2020, down significantly from the 20 liters sold per inhabitant in 1961, Reuters reported.”
A lot of it seems to be demographics – in Europe younger people aren’t interested in wine & now gravitate more to craft beers & cocktails (like the ubiquitous espresso martini)
Weren’t U.S. liquor stores being run ragged in 2020 by folks coping with the pandemic? Maybe it wasn’t the same in France.
I have noticed an uptick in abstaining, for whatever reasons varied folks have for it.
Maybe wine was not going as fast as other kinds of alcohol. I know there was a big surge in 2020, no idea what the levels are now.
At least they’re not just dumping the alcohol. I know that several companies that have have been buying up waste alcohol products & recycling them into non-consumable products like sanitizers/room diffusers etc. Haeckels experimented with taking waste coffee grounds from coffee shops & turning them into facial scrubs & waste fruit/juice from cocktail bars & using them in hand washes etc.