The Europeans, it turns out, typically have lots of surplus wine they can't sell—and some of it ends up in American gas tanks.
It happens like this: The European governments offer "distillation credits"—a subsidy for wine producers to turn the surplus wine into alcohol. And American companies like Archer Daniels Midland Co. have been buying the European wine alcohol at auctions and turning it into ethanol.
Ethanol is used as a gasoline supplement, an "oxygenate" to help reduce auto pollution. It will replace MTBE in California gasoline in the next two years. So some of that European wine wound up in American gas tanks.
How much money does ADM get from the government?