France launches wine distillation aid to cut surplus stocks

France has opened a new crisis distillation program for red and rosé wines, offering 33€/hl in aid and setting a ceiling of 40 million euros as the government tries to reduce heavy stocks and ease pressure on the market.

The measure applies to AOP, IGP and wines without geographical indication, as long as they are red or rosé, have at least 11% alcohol by volume and are delivered in bulk. The aid is split between 30€/hl for the holders of the wine, including growers, producer organizations, cooperatives and merchants, and 3€/hl for distillers. Applications must be filed electronically on FranceAgriMer’s data acquisition platform by May 12 at noon.

The program is financed through the European crisis reserve and is meant to remove surplus volumes from the market and redirect them to industrial or energy uses. French officials said the goal is to respond to high stock levels and worsening market conditions in some wine categories, especially in segments where prices have come under pressure from oversupply.

The distillation plan is part of a broader viticulture crisis package announced by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard at the Sitevi trade fair and later approved by European authorities with the adoption of the so-called wine package. That package also included a permanent vine-pull scheme, which closed in March and will remove about 27,929 hectares from production by Dec. 31, with aid set at 4,000 euros per hectare, or about 111 million euros in total.

This is the second major intervention in a few years aimed at shrinking excess supply. In 2024-25, a previous vine-pull program covered 27,451 hectares under the same compensation rate. In 2023, France had already allocated 200 million euros to distill more than 4 million hectoliters of still wines under an earlier emergency scheme that paid much higher rates than the current one: 75€/hl for AOP wines, 65€/hl for IGP wines and 45€/hl for wines without geographical indication. Officials said the new program could eliminate about 1.2 million hectoliters.