distillation, compulsory. In an effort to curb, and dispose of, surplus wine production, the eu authorities instituted a system in 1982 whereby any wine produced over a certain limit should theoretically be compulsorily bought, at a standard and not too attractive price, and distilled into industrial alcohol (which policy resulted, perhaps inevitably, in an alcohol surplus). Average annual quantities distilled under this scheme in the 1980s were well over 30 million hl/790 million gal, or about a fifth of total European production. In 1993 the European Commission admitted that the scheme had done little to curb over-production, and announced stricter measures designed to offer less financial support to over-producers, and to curb abuse of the system more effectively. Between 1993 and 1996, the amount distilled was reduced to about 10% of production, but the Commission decided to crack down and, in 1998, proposed introducing just one ‘crisis distillation’ measure instead of a multi-tiered system. The proposed new measure was intended to deal only with exceptional cases of market disturbance and serious quality problems, but continued to play an important part in the European wine market. Following further reforms of the common market organisation (CMO) for Wine in 1999, distillation was ‘no longer an obligatory measure in the event of serious wine market crises’ and it could be applied to quality wine. An EU report published in 2002 concluded that distillation was not an efficient way of eliminating structural surpluses and suggested alternative measures such as paying growers a premium for green harvesting. Compulsory distillation was finally phased out altogether in 2012 as a result of the wide-ranging 2008 reforms to the CMO. However, in 2014 Spain decided to distil 4 million hl (106 million gallons) to try to balance its own surplus.
