French wine to be used as Fuel
Believe it. The European Union has offered to turn 40 million gallons of surplus French wine into fuel, disinfectant, or any other use for distilled alcohol. The same offer went out to Spain for their surplus, about 100 million gallons of table wine. Wow, are sales that bad right now? Accordingly to yesterdays SFGate feature,they are.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:37 am
[...] In an effort to win back market share from New World wine regions, the European Union Farm Ministers association overwhelmingly agreed on Monday that reform is necessary for the continent’s wine industry to improve. After the embarrassment last year of having to distill millions of gallons of wine into fuel, the EU is eager to avoid the same this year. The group is talking about the removal of 10% of the vineyards in the area, but some fear that farmers would be hurt even more by doing that. [...]