Europe’s wine cellars are brimming as soaring food and drink prices leave consumers buying fewer bottles.
High inflation and sliding exports, coupled with a strong 2022 harvest, have fueled a buildup in the bloc, the European Commission said Tuesday. That’s created a “serious loss of income,” especially for rosé and red wine producers in France, Spain and Portugal.
The government is boosting support measures for the industry to curb the glut. That includes letting growers distill wine for alcohol — only meant for non-food purposes — and compensating them based on a share of recent market prices.
“It was necessary to adopt temporary markets measures to avoid that the unsold wine weighs on the whole internal market and prevents producers to find sufficient storage capacity for the new harvest,” the commission said.
