The French wine industry, victim, in turn, of the coronavirus. Faced with unsold products, the wine-growers ask to be able to transform their surplus wine… into hydroalcoholic gel.
It may seem like a crime of lese, majesty! Failing to drink the wine, we will wash our hands! But, our winegrowers no longer know what to do with their stocks… the vats overflow. In France, there are 300 million liters of excess wine. And at European level. 1 billion liters in excess. So why not distill this surplus? That is to say that we recover the alcohol, to make it hydroalcoholic gel.
However, the French have not given up drinking wine! On the contrary, some addictologists worry about these “extended aperitifs” with confinement.
Yes, but forget that the cafes and restaurants have closed. They represented a quarter of sales. The wine merchants have closed. So it's true, the French continue to drink at home. But, in these times of confinement, it is more like ordinary wine ... We do not open champagne or grand crus. And then, over a long period, anyway, the French market is in decline. Since the 1960s, average alcohol consumption has been cut in half. And for wine, it is divided by 3. Until now, our winegrowers have compensated with export. However, the market closed with coronavirus. It had even started to close before ... with the 25% surcharge introduced by Donald Trump in the United States, our first export market. And then, Britain is suffering from Brexit. And now it's the coronavirus. The risk is to see, all these foreign customers turn away permanently from French wine. It is not trivial, I remind you that the wine and spirits sector generates a trade surplus of more than 10 billion euros, it is the second largest surplus, after aeronautics. We know that air travel is severely affected by the virus. We should not lose there, the other field of excellence of France: our wine sector.