Cooperativas Agroalimentarias Castilla-La Mancha decided today, at its meeting of the Sectoral Commission for Wines held by telematics, to ask the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) to implement market regulation measures. Specifically, to allocate 6 million hectolitres of wine (1 million for PDO wines, another for PGI wines and four more for other wines) to crisis distillation, through part of the budget of the Support Programme for the Spanish Wine Sector (PASVE) which belongs to the sector itself, complemented by support from an extraordinary EU budget and/or national funds provided by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Fall in consumption due to the pandemic
For the regional organization of cooperatives, the ultimate objective of this measure is to alleviate the consequences of the fall in global consumption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
On another note, the heads of the cooperative wineries indicated that it is very important that the price of distillation be set in euros/hectare, and not in euros/litre as in the previous campaign, to avoid any unfair comparison between wines with more or less acquired alcoholic content; and they urged that the measure be implemented as soon as possible so that it does not happen as it did last year, which was very late, in order to be able to hold down the prices of the different wine processing products.
The Wine Commission does not consider it appropriate to introduce another storage measure, since a large volume was already stored last year, in addition to the one million hectolitres stored voluntarily by the agri-food cooperatives in Castile-La Mancha under the self-regulation measure which ended on 7 January.
He is also not in favour of the green harvest measure, considering it impractical and inefficient in correcting excesses already generated. The budget for this measure should therefore increase support for a powerful measure such as the six million hectolitre crisis distillation of wine, which effectively balances the mismatch between supply and demand in the domestic wine market this year.
