The plan to turn French wine into industrial alcoholTAZAA News

According to the French Ministry of Agriculture, the country’s production of long-unused wine is now so high that the government plans to turn it into industrial alcohol, which is used for the industrial production of pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

France is the world’s second largest producer of wine after Italy, and the French nation is traditionally regarded as a wine-loving nation.

France is one of the few countries in Europe where countless vineyards are spread over large areas. The varieties of wine produced in the southwestern region of France, Bordeaux, are particularly well-known, and the region also has a large wine production.

Grape growers and winemakers in Bordeaux say overall yields remain high, and a long-standing trend of French consumers buying relatively cheap wines for their own consumption has left their cellars so full that no more wine can be stored. There.

In France, such unsold stocks of wine have become so great that there is no room left in the wine cellars to store even the wine after the next season’s harvest.

In France, both the volume and the value of such wine reserves are so great that, according to the Ministry of Agriculture of this country in Paris, it will cost 160 million euros or about 1470 million dollars to produce industrial alcohol from this wine again through chemicals. process will

One aspect of this project is that only part of the unused French wine production will be made possible. Didier Cousin, a Bordeaux winemaker, said there was enough wine in his company’s cellars alone, the equivalent of two years’ worth of production.

The French government had previously advised farmers to start destroying grape vines. In this regard, as in other regions of the country, the agricultural unions of the Bordeaux region also started protesting against the government.

These farmers said that they have to destroy their crops, but they also want financial compensation from the government. The government’s advice was to reduce grape production and allow affected farmers to use their land for other crops.

For this process, it is necessary to destroy at least 15 thousand hectares of grapes. This area is equal to the total area of ​​21 thousand football fields. But for this process, the farmers demand that the state pays them 10,000 euros per hectare.

The French government last funded the business process of converting domestic wine production to industrial alcohol in 2020. The sector was then hit hard by the global coronavirus pandemic as hotels, restaurants and wine bars closed due to lockdowns and wine exports fell.

In the current situation, the French national interprofessional wine commission stated that there are about five million workers working in the French wine industry, and if the government does not take effective measures to improve the situation, half a million wine workers will be employed in the next ten years. the workers will be provided with work.

According to the information of the French wine production association, last year the sale of red wine decreased by 15% only in domestic supermarkets. In addition, there is a clear trend of continuous decline in the sale of white and rose wine.

According to expert analysts, 70 years ago in France, an average citizen drank an average of 130 liters of wine per year. But today, this tendency to drink wine has decreased to 40 liters per person per year on average.