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.
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.
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.
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
I mean I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you read the article, or even just the context OP posted just below the headline, you may find something interesting like:
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.
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?
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.
