€500m EU wine reform plan

THE European Union is to end the practice of paying to turn wine into disinfectant and industrial alcohol in an effort to save the industry.

Instead it will spend the €500 million a year on encouraging farmers to retire, destroying poor quality vines, improving the quality of what is left and promoting European wine worldwide.

It will ban the use of sugar in wines and change the wine labelling system that discriminates against table wines, refusing to allow them give the grape variety and year of production.