2y ago

France to spend €200m destroying wine as demand falls

www.bbc.com France to spend €200m destroying wine as demand falls

A cocktail of problems has hit the wine industry, including demand falling as more people drink craft beer.

The French government is allocating €200m (£171.6m) to destroy surplus wine and support producers.

It comes amid a cocktail of problems for the industry, including a falling demand for wine as more people drink craft beer.

Overproduction and the cost of living crisis are also hitting the industry.

Most of the €200m will be used to buy excess stock, with the alcohol sold for use in items such as hand sanitiser, cleaning products and perfume.

World News @lemmygrad.ml

Ronin_5 @lemmygrad.ml

2y ago

France destroys wine stocks due to lack of demand; only in capitalism.

www.bbc.com /news/world-europe-66623636

46 9

67 comments

Damn. I'm much more of a craft beer person, but this is sad. Is just marking it down not an option?
Edit: Oh, never mind. They want to stop prices collapsing. Yeah, sounds like France. Forever bailing out their farmers 🙄
- Is just marking it down not an option?
  Not when you're propping up billionaire monopolists.
  
  Lol. True.
- To avoid price collapse and still sell it they could create a generic label to bottle it under and export it. They could probably sell it near the original price in the US with a good marketing campaign.
  
  Like Yellowtail, probably will even be better quality
  
  Australia has so called "clean skin" wines. Plain bottles with only the region and grape type.
  Large volumes of surplus wine gets sold like this so the big brands can manage their brand value.
  It's pot luck what you get, but sometimes it's gold and it's nearly always half decent.

Y'know, if you're going to spend the money anyways, just subsidize the sellers for the season and let them cut costs to the point that demand tips up. That way they'll make some money themselves and learn for the next season where the price point is.
All paying to destroy it in order to keep prices up does is... keep it expensive above what the market will bear and cost the taxpayers while making them thirsty and sad
- I'd love to know how much more demand they could have created by spending that money giving away the wine at a big event where a single sommelier teaches wine appreciation to the masses. Create future customers instead of trying to manipulate markets, I say. Especially when you're selling something addictive.
- cut costs to the point that demand tips up
  Price can be a factor in determining what to drink, obviously, but to compare these different products as though they're interchangeable would be a mistake. There's no price point at which a Bordeaux becomes a gose, so you have to account for not just the cost in dollars but the cost inasmuch as the consumer would be subbing something they don't want for something they do. How much cheaper would wine have to be to induce someone who wants a beer to drink it? Personally, if there's only red wine around I'll just go to bed sober at any price.

that sucks, wine preserves long time after all, they could save it as Canada's maple syrup or US Cheese reserves
- This is cheap wine which doesn’t age well.
  
  couldn't they still distill it and sell it as something else?
- Doesn't age after bottling
  
  As long as they don't kill the yeast it will age in the bottle. Distilled drinks don't age in the bottle because their aging is due to their interactions with the casks they are aged in rather than the yeast cleaning up the byproducts from the initial fermentation.

You know what would drive demand up ? Cheap wine.
- The world already has Two Buck Chuck. How much cheaper do you want?
- To be fair, I can get a bottle of D.O.C.G. Prosecco from Costco for $7, and most people consider it to be fairly good prosecco

Businesses should be forced to donate unsold food products
- I'm not sure I'd consider alcohol a "food product"
  Although I 110% agree with your comment.
  
  Tell that to Germany

A few months ago didn't the country have riots about how the government tried to raise the retirement age? Shows where the priorities are
- The government is terrified of the agricultural holders union.
  So they will do anything to try to keep them happy.
  
  The government is paid by those corporates unions
  The mobsters from FNSEA hunt journalists and activists and sometimes local elected officials
  They do not go for their buddies they are financing all years in exchange of those publics fundings
- The government is terrified of the agricultural holders union.
  So they will do anything to try to keep them happy.
  
  It used to be true when farmers represented 10% of the working force. They barely represent 2% now.
  Farming unions have lost their power in France.
  This is a different issue altogether I believe. Potentially lobbying from major winemakers close to the Elysée

So all I have to do to get millions of euros from the government is produce a bunch of shit that nobody wants?
- Paid for by people who produced things that people did want.
- That’s how the whole economy works, financed straight off the money printer at the top. Launder a percentage for yourself and burn the rest on a bonfire.

I'd do it for them for half that!

The grapes of wrath aren't usually so literal.
- They very much were. The book is about people moving to harvest grapes in California
  
  I mean, fair enough, and I've only seen the film adaptation, but I would expect literal grapes of wrath to ferment into Klingon bloodwine, and I don't recall that being a plot point.

So that means the demand for wine destroyers increased? Where can I apply?

I volunteer as tribute to take a bite of of this deplorable situation

Aaaand another example of a whole industry destroyed by ignorance, anachronisms and greed. Good. What's next? Electric cars? Furniture?
- Ads please

That's a bummer, but I do appreciate how France supports it's artisanal culture and producers. It's nice being able to have a decent glass of wine at just about any brasserie or cafe in Paris for under 10 euro. In the US it is like 12 bucks a glass for some pretty mediocre wine.
- I was gonna guess you're American even before reading your last sentence, because €10 for a glass of wine is outrageous by European standards. Hehe.
  I'm in Eastern Europe right now, and I typically get a half-liter of very good local wine for less than €5.
  
  Even in France you can get an whole bottle of an excellent Bordeaux or Côtes du Rhône Villages for less than €5
  If you got charged €10 for a glass you must have a big neon "TOURIST" sign on your head 😂
  
  You can buy very decent wine for less than 3€/bottle in any Portuguese supermarket 😅
- French here
  None of this money will ever end in anything artisanal
  This is for industrial wine and big lands owners that fund mains politicals parties
  Then they will have another round of public money because of bad weather, then another because ebil chileans do better and cheaper whine then another because of so much money we have to salary accountants to put all of this in tax havens
  Those scams are running since decades
- As an American, I am seething

Why dont they turn it into vinegar?
- They probably do. The article mentions some nonfood products that the destroyed wine can be sold as, but I don't think there's much lazier things to do than let it become vinegar.
- If you're thinking of industrial vinegar or cheap white supermarket vinegar then because wine isn't a good feedstock for that, we have much more efficient processes nowadays. If you're thinking of high-grade luxury vinegars then because the wine is comparably shit. Also, already wine, not must.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
It comes amid a cocktail of problems for the industry, including a falling demand for wine as more people drink craft beer.
Most of the €200m will be used to buy excess stock, with the alcohol sold for use in items such as hand sanitiser, cleaning products and perfume.
In a bid to cut back on the overproduction, money will also be available for winegrowers to change to other products, such as olives.
In funnelling the money into the industry, the French government aims to stop "prices collapsing... so that wine-makers can find sources of revenue again", Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau said.
Despite the financial help - an initial EU fund of €160m which the French government topped up to €200m - the wine industry needs to "look to the future, think about consumer changes ... and adapt", he added.
European Commission data for the year to June shows that wine consumption has fallen 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 15% in France, 22% in Germany and 34% in Portugal, while wine production across the bloc - the world's biggest wine-making area - rose 4%.
The original article contains 211 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 12%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Crazy they couldn't just export it. Bunch of countries love wine
- Globally there’s a glut of low quality wine.
  Tarrifs and shipping costs eat up too much profit margin.
  
  Not just globally, also locally. At my house.

Maybe they should stop making so much if they are going to destroy it.

"A cocktail of problems"
Heheh.

Such a shame for the wine that so much must be spent to destroy it.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all.
Grapes of Wrath

Hand sanitizer is all French wine is good for anyway.

67 comments