{"id":379614,"date":"2026-04-03T07:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379614\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T07:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:43:08","slug":"struggling-french-vineyards-turn-excess-wine-into-ethanol-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379614\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling French vineyards turn excess wine into ethanol \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tens of millions of euros worth of French<\/a> red wine<\/a> and ros\u00e9 that vineyards cannot sell is to be distilled into ethanol and industrial alcohol to help winegrowers cope with falling demand.<\/p>\n

The European Commission<\/a> has approved a \u20ac40-million \u201cemergency\u201d fund to help French wine producers find other uses for excess booze that won\u2019t end up in bottles.<\/p>\n

French vineyards are struggling due to shifting drinking habits that have seen people consume less alcohol. <\/p>\n

Data provided to Brussels officials by French authorities shows the average price of bulk orders filled by the French industry is down 19 per cent, compared with previous years. <\/p>\n

The commission attributed the fall in the price commanded by red and ros\u00e9 to a \u201cdeceleration in domestic consumption, coupled with a continuous decrease in exports\u201d. Retail figures show an 8 per cent drop in sales of red and ros\u00e9 last year in France. <\/p>\n

The falling demand has not been matched by a similar reduction in the amount of wine produced, leading the French government and Brussels to intervene to prevent rivers of unwanted wine flooding the market and tanking prices. <\/p>\n

The commission, the European Union\u2019s executive arm, this week announced it would release \u20ac40 million in emergency funding to pay French winegrowers to remove red and ros\u00e9 they had produced from the market. <\/p>\n

The plan would see excess wine produced in Bordeaux, Burgundy and the country\u2019s other regions end up as ethanol or industrial alcohol, to be used by the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries or other manufacturing sectors. <\/p>\n

\"BurgundyBurgundy is one of the regions where excess wine will be distilled into ethanol due to oversupply. Photograph: Getty Images <\/p>\n

In a legal text setting out the decision, the commission explained the scheme would incentivise winegrowers to allow unwanted red and ros\u00e9 to be distilled into alternative products. This would prevent the existing \u201cmarket imbalance\u201d from triggering \u201ca more severe or prolonged crisis\u201d, which the EU body warned could spread across the European wine industry. <\/p>\n

The French government has separately been subsidising vineyards to uproot vines, in an attempt to tamp down the amount of wine produced.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s executive body previously provided emergency funding to French winemakers in 2023 and 2024 to distil 2.65 million hectolitres, which is enough wine to fill more than 100 Olympic swimming pools, into ethanol and other industrial products. <\/p>\n

It is envisaged the new scheme backed by EU cash would remove slightly less than half of that volume from the French market this time. <\/p>\n

Winegrowers will receive compensation set at about 50 per cent of the price recorded for bulk transactions during the most recent production season. <\/p>\n

In a statement, EU agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen said French wine producers, the \u201cbackbone of Europe\u2019s viticultural heritage\u201d, were facing \u201cunprecedented\u201d challenges. <\/p>\n

The intervention was necessary to address \u201cthe collapse in prices and the saturation of stocks in France\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of millions of euros worth of French red wine and ros\u00e9 that vineyards cannot sell is to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5148,1712,1814,42,43,40,38,41,39,17328],"class_list":{"0":"post-379614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-european-union","9":"tag-european-commission","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories","17":"tag-wine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}