The unquenchable desire of Britons for New World wines has forced Brussels to order nearly a billion bottles of French and Italian wine to be turned into fuel and disinfectant, reports Anthony Browne in The Times, London. The European Commission will then spend €2.4 billion digging up vineyards across the continent.

The drastic measures to drain Europe’s swelling wine lake come as winemakers across the Continent face a seemingly unstoppable invasion of cheaper and more consistent wines from Australia, Chile, the US and South Africa.

The Commission’s announcement that it would spend €131 million to distil 430 million bottles of French wine and 371 million bottles of Italian wine into fuel was met with protests by French wine growers, who demanded that European taxpayers should buy 1.1 billion bottles of their produce.

“There is the equivalent of a year’s production of wine sitting in tanks which we will have to turn into petrol, which is pretty stupid. We need to make less wine,” said one Brussels official.