Paradoxically, this happens at the request of the very laborers of the vine, that is, the winemakers. The rational French call this "the struggle for production."
As the Minister of Agriculture of the Fifth Republic, Dominique Bussereau, stated the other day, winemakers asked the government for permission to destroy 2.5 million hectoliters of wine in the near future. And not just any rotgut, but vintage wine, primarily Bordeaux. The fact is that last year's grape harvest in France was so generous that too much wine was produced. And prices need to be kept at a certain level, so they decided to pour it out. And this is only the beginning.
"Too much Bordeaux wine is being produced," believes Denis Verdier, head of the French Winegrowers' Confederation. "Of the 120,000 hectares of vineyards cultivated today in the Bordeaux region, 10,000 must soon be uprooted. Until Europe develops a unified wine policy, we need to reset the counters to zero. A similar strategy must also be developed in Italy and Spain. Otherwise, we won't be able to withstand competition from Chilean, American, Australian, and South African wines."
Strategy is strategy, but why destroy the wine?! Wouldn't it be more humane to send it at moderate prices, for example, to our vast expanses, where Bordeaux, Burgundy, and all that goes with them would be consumed at once? "Reducing wine production is a purely European matter," sternly declared Dominique Bussereau, who supports the idea of "wine genocide." One consolation: some French winemakers have appealed to the European Commission to develop uniform criteria for distilling surplus wine into ethyl alcohol. Indeed, why let good things go to waste.