BEYOND THE PALEWALL (1)

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

SACRÉ BLEU - Wine Destruction

   You may have missed this bad news among the other bad news, but this is truly terrible. There is too much wine in Europe and the French government is spending over 200 million euros to get rid of it. Perhaps they could just ship it to the LCBO.

   "France Has Too Much Wine. It's Paying Millions to Destroy the Leftovers," Caroline Anders, Washington Post, Aug. 26, 2023.

"Ruining so much wine may sound ludicrous, but there’s a straightforward economic reason this is happening: Making wine is getting more expensive due in part to recent world events, and people are drinking less of it. That has left some producers with a surplus that they cannot price high enough to make a profit. Now, some of France’s most famous wine-producing regions, like Bordeaux, are struggling....

In June, the European Union initially gave France about $172 million to destroy nearly 80 million gallons of wine, and the French government announced additional funds this week. Producers will use the funds to distill their wine into pure alcohol to be used for other products, such as cleaning supplies or perfume.

Wine consumption in France has been plummeting since its peak in 1926, when the average French citizen drank about 136 liters per year. Today, that number is closer to 40 liters, The Washington Post previously reported. Consumers are also inundated with beverage choices now, and they’re choosing wine less and less.

As consumption has taken a nosedive, production costs have increased and inflation has tightened budgets around the world. That’s especially true since the coronavirus pandemic, which shuttered bars, restaurants and wineries, driving up prices. The war in Ukraine also influenced the industry by disrupting shipments of products essential to winemaking, such as fertilizer and bottles. And on top of the pandemic and war, climate change is forcing growers to adapt to new harvest schedules and reckon with more extreme weather."

Rivers of Wine! 

  Not long after that article was published, this one was. I am not suggesting they are related.

   "Nearly 600,000 Gallons of Wine Wash Down the Street in Portuguese Town,"  María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2023. 

"Residents in a Portuguese village woke up to an almost biblical scene on Sunday morning. The streets were impassable, replaced by a raging river of close to 600,000 gallons of red wine.

After two wine tanks belonging to a local distillery burst, enough booze flowed down the roads of São Lourenço do Bairro to fill an Olympic-size pool — and to spark fears from local leaders about possible environmental damage…

Sunday’s wine wave began at Destilaria Levira, a company that specializes in transforming wine into a slew of products, including gin, cleaning supplies and food oils. Though authorities are still investigating what caused the tanks to burst, the company said the wine they carried was essentially going to be destroyed — or distilled into raw alcohol — as part of the Portuguese government’s attempts to address a brewing wine crisis.

The nation with the world’s highest wine consumption per capita is among the European countries grappling with a massive surplus of wine this year. The combination of rising production costs and an ever-increasing range of alcoholic drink options has resulted in plummeting demand for wine in countries such as France, Spain and Italy....

The episode in Portugal isn’t the first time large amounts of wine have spilled. In 2020, the Russian River in California’s Sonoma County was tainted red after a 97,000-gallon winery tank burst open. That same year, a 13,000-gallon tank broke at a Spanish winery, leaving a flood of red wine gushing down like a breached dam."

  This story was also reported in the New York Times: "A River of Wine Flooded the Streets of a Town in Portugal," Sept. 12, 2023.

"The tanks that collapsed were part of an effort to address a broader problem: There’s too much wine in Europe. Portugal, like other major European wine producers such as France and Italy, is suffering from an oversupply of wine, largely because of a decline in both consumption and exports. The tanks that collapsed were being used to store surplus wine, according to the distillery."

I will try to find some better news.