European wine growers choose long term strategy

Happy Day!

According to Just-drinks.com, European wine growers are rushing to apply for subsidies to rip-up non-economic vineyards.  What was one of the most contentious elements of a reform package designed to drain the EU's "wine lake" seems to have become quite a well regarded option.

France and Spain (amongst others) have long had the problem of producing far more wine than either country could hope to market.  This problem has created:

• social rifts as evidenced by CRAV, a group which emerged in response to the brutal economics of producing the relatively non-descript wines of the Mediterenean coastal regions. 
• a bottomless pit for EU subsidies which could happily be used for developing new markets for European wines as opposed to industrial distillation. 
• a situation where good wines from large apellations like Cotes du Rhone suffer from consumer backlash toward the BOGOF specials they've had at one too many art openings

Now it seems:

• "If all the requests were granted, the Commission would have to more than double its compensation budget for 2008, from EUR464m (US$598m) to EUR1bn"
• "We can only accept about 45% of the demand this year"
  
• "Applications from Spain amounted to 9% of the country's vines"
• "Up to 175,000 hectares of EU vines are to be grubbed over the next three years as part of the EU wine reform process"

Here's to a rise in the average quality of wine in Europe!  (and an end to the produce / distill death spiral)

Comments

[Wine Clubs]

Interesting times in the wine industry. Napa has so many grapes for sale I worry about production levels 2-3 years from now. Thanks for the article, I haven't followed the happenings in the EU markets.