The draft royal decree, rejected no longer only by all the appellations of origin but also by cooperatives and agrarian organizations, is harmful and unfair to the winegrowers and producers of Castilla y León and the Denomination of Origin León

The presidents of the appellations of origin – who in recent weeks have held three telematic meetings with the counselor of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development of the Junta de Castilla y León and with their technical team – the wine cooperatives of the community autonomous, through Uracyl, and professional organizations have highly negative the proposals that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will collect in a royal decree that will develop a plan of extraordinary aid to the wine sector in the face of the problems that it presents throughout the country, as a consequence of the effects unleashed by the pandemic unleashed by the covid-19 and the closure of the Horeca channel, which has especially affected quality wine and specifically those with the highest consumption by this route, as is the case of under the Denomination of Origin León.

As presented in the draft royal decree, the draft whose terms have just been released clearly favors some Spanish wine-growing areas and greatly limits the possibilities of applying these measures in Castilla y León, which considers it harmful, unbalanced and unfair.

The ministerial proposal is as follows:

Crisis distillation. It is set at a maximum of 2 million hectoliters, of which only half a million will be for wines covered by the PDO and 1.5 million for the rest of the wines, when what was required was at least to balance this proposal for a proposal of 50% distribution. The increase in aid for the distillation of wines not covered by the PDO goes from 0.25 euros / liter to 0.30 euros / liter. This increase, which in addition to not being justified is excessive, will mean 7.5 million euros – of the approximately 75 planned – more financial consumption in the package of measures and the requirement by the regulatory councils is that it must be maintained at 0.25 euros / liter. Furthermore, a distance supply cost is not taken into account, which clearly discriminates against Castilla y León, since the distilleries are highly concentrated territorially in other areas. For this reason, the distances from the warehouses to the existing distilleries are very important, also increasing the cost of supply to the distillers.

Harvest in green. It is distributed only to 25% for areas with designations of origin and 75% for the rest, and the Ministry is required to establish an average destruction price that is the same throughout the national territory, which could be established at 600 euros per hectare. if it was done manually and at 300 euros per hectare if it is by mechanical procedures.

Aid for private storage. The Government is requested to make a significant increase in the subsidy because the 0.02 euros per hectoliter / day are still insufficient. The aid amount should be increased to € 0.04 per hectoliter / day.

DOLeón