Because of a huge wine surplus, the...

Because of a huge wine surplus, the European Community has decided to distill more than a quarter of this year’s production into non-beverage alcohol. More than 2.5 billion bottles of low-quality wine will never reach retail shops, almost a third more than the number diverted last year. The alcohol was offered at very low prices for use as fuel in power-generating plants but with little success. Spain, the world’s largest wine producer, will have to distill more than 265 million gallons, and Italian and French producers another 400 million gallons and 230 million gallons each.