Free Republic

MORE than eight million litres of this season's production of Beaujolais wine is being turned into near-pure alcohol for use in disinfectants, cleaning products or fuel additives, as French vineyards face up to a massive overproduction crisis.A chronic wine glut, falling domestic consumption and fierce overseas competition have converged to create a wine crisis on an unprecedented scale. With "lakes" of unsold wine threatening to undermine prices, the European Union has resorted to paying vintners to destroy some of their stock each year, distilling billions of bottles of perfectly drinkable wine into pure alcohol. Sceptics say the measure, which cost...

BELLEVILLE-SUR-SAONE, France (AP) - At some of France's most celebrated vineyards, vintage wine is being transformed into alcohol for disinfectants or gasoline additives - a high-tech process winemakers hope will help them stay afloat.Chronic overproduction, dipping domestic consumption and fierce overseas competition have created a European wine crisis of unprecedented scale.With lakes of unsold wine threatening to undermine prices, the European Union has resorted to paying vintners to destroy some of their stock each year, distilling billions of bottles of perfectly drinkable wine into pure alcohol.The steaming grape juice that's left is hauled back to the vineyards, where it will...

Well, pour yourself a glass of vino to go with that lobster tail tonight because wine prices have fallen so much, winemakers in Australia are complaining that wine is now cheaper than some bottled water. WATER! Dan Murphy, a major wine-retail chain in Australia, is currently selling cleanskins, bottles of wine without a label that are usually sold in a case, for 1.99 Australian dollars, or about $1.60, the Sunday Mail reports. That’s less than half of what wine cost 10 years ago, the New York Times reported. “Australia can’t even bottle air and make money selling at that price,”...

While the Obama administration is busy eviscerating private property rights at the federal level, Republican-controlled Fauquier County, Va., has decided to follow suit in its own way. Fauquier's Board of Supervisors recently passed a winery ordinance that tramples private property rights and some fundamental civil liberties. Most of the wineries are mom and pop operations. Some, though, have been more creative in marketing, employing more people, and generating revenue. The county thinks such success must be punished. At the center of all this is the county zoning administrator, a bureaucratic czar named Kimberley Johnson, whose bullying and heavy-handed enforcement tactics...