Stories like this really make my day. According to an article in the Courier-Mail, a Queensland Australia newspaper, Australian wine makers are thinking about turning some of their wine into ethanol because a worldwide glut of wine is forcing prices down and Australian grape growers need alternative markets . Apparently, the French did this last year with about 100 million liters of wine for the same reason. The wine maker quoted in the article talks about putting in a distillery which he claims could be productive all year, processing wine into ethanol for use in brandy, muscat, ports and sherries as well as for production of ethanol for fuel.
The cute little image I found to go with this story is from Australian Wine Online. It’s the logo for the Vision 2025 initiative. The vision is that by the Year 2025 the Australian wine industry will achieve $4.5 billion in annual sales by being the world’s most influential and profitable supplier of branded wines, pioneering wine as a universal first choice lifestyle beverage. Maybe making it into ethanol will help achieve that goal.