When I started in the wine trade my boss asked me one day to imagine a vine with ten kilos of grapes on it, I replied that it is quite difficult to imagine what that would look like. He replied ok, change kilos for bottles!!!
He then went on to explain that if you reduce the quantity of grapes each vine produces, by judicious pruning and then by carefully managing the leaf growth, a winemaker will produce a more highly concentrated fruit and if he or she is any good they will then be able to produce a half way decent wine.
My point here is that this simple act if carried out on a much, much bigger scale than it is now through out Europe, it would go a long way to solving the problem of over production of diluted and bad wine.
I know that this sounds simplistic, at the moment as the system stands throughout Europe the AOC?s, DOC?s and DO?s etc actually encourage producers to do the opposite, by quantifying the amount that they can produce (maximums). This whole exercise in control is another way to protect the bad producers from going out of business, so very French.
Like many others I believe that the whole system in Europe needs completely freeing up, let the market place decide that which is worth buying!
I also agree with those that say that the label on the front of the bottle should tell one exactly what is in the bottle, I am very happy to know who has made it and where they are in the world but it should not be yet another device for protecting bad wine makers hiding behind stupid labels.
So to sum up, the wine industry in the now ever expanding EU has to go out and buy a whole shed full of pruning implements and then concentrate its efforts on encouraging its producers to go for less but more really good wine.