Spain to distil 4m hl of wine

The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (Magrama) is to distill 4 million hl of wine over the next few weeks, enough to fill 533 million bottles, to make way for the 2014 harvest, with the support of what is described in official reports as 'the vast majority of the wine industry'. Compulsory distillation was how the EU drained the wine lake in the bad old days. Thanks to a determined programme (summarised here by Julia in 2007) of encouraging vine growers to rip out what are theoretically Europe's lowest-quality vineyards, supply and demand have over the last few...