Maria Luisa Soriano, Counselor of Agriculture of the Spanish region Castilla-La Mancha, has managed to wrest the commitment of the Ministry for not applying the compulsory distillation of wine for industrial and energy use up to 4 million hectoliters (wielded by Royal Decree to be published in the following days) if market conditions during September improve and wine surpluses do not grow.
This commitment has been rated highly by the vast majority of the wine industry. And is that both wineries and cooperatives had fully shown against the action taken by the Central Government, as clearly understood that harmed their interests.
Anyway, to find out if finally will be or not carried out the controversial crisis distillation to regulate the surplus of wine we will have to wait for September, when it will be known exactly the volume of stocks in the Spanish wineries up to July 31st and will have a better view of the current market situation.
Spanish producers hope is that the pace of sales continues to improve, which together with a grape harvest which in principle would not be high, would lighten the current scenario (both for bottled and bulk wine).