Anyone who follows MP Michelle Rempel on Twitter knows that she has an affinity for wine. I share that enjoyment. (and for craft-beer, being an all-grain home-brewer)
You would also have noticed that she has been advocating strongly for the Canadian wine industry in recent weeks. Being unaware of any problems in the Canadian Wine industry, I was curious what the issues were, so I asked her. She pointed me to this Global News report. So, as gathered from that, she’s advocating for strict country of origin laws regarding grapes and grape juice.
This after the US Congress was nice enough to eliminate their Country of Origin labels on Alberta Beef. Nice!
Course anyone who actually cares about wine would immediately ask, isn’t that what VQA Ontario and the BC Wine Authority ensures. The VQA statutes state the VQA label be prominently displayed on the same face as the front label. What’s the problem here?
Well, apparently it is an issue. Instead of telling people what VQA is, we should run to the gov’t and have them lawfully sanction those Canadian businesses looking to just sell wine.
So, Michelle, consider this a public service announcement.
Buy this:
There, now we don’t need more stupid gov’t regulations on successful industries to make up for uninformed and uncaring buyers.
I listened to her talking about this on CBC and instead of calling wine lovers oenophiles she called them winos. Best laugh of the day.
We only buy VQA wines in our home, unless on occasion, rarely so, we want to try some foreign wine. Any “Canadian” wines not displaying the VQA label may be up to 90% foreign content. The downside is that generally the VQA wines are a couple of dollars more per bottle.
Too bad wine in Canada is not priced similarly to what wine is priced at in Europe.
Is cypress hill winery counted in this?
I don’t know why we get hosed for everything here in Canada, maybe it is because we say sorry for everything. Bunch of frukin pussy’s.
That’s because Canadians are Hosers. Just ask Bob and Doug McKenzie, eh?
Some years ago, the origin of grapes was an issue when Americans would come north, think they were buying local wine, and found out the grapes were from California. They felt cheated, and understandably. If it’s a “BC wine”, the grapes should be local. Can you imagine France or Australia tolerating the importation of cheaper grapes from elsewhere to bulk up a “local” product?
Cal2, most of Cypress Hills wines are fruit wines (as opposed to their two grape wines, one of which are their grapes) and so don’t qualify. Same goes for Living Sky Winery, all fruit. I don’t know much about Banache Winery.
Secondly, Sask doesn’t have a Provincial VQA Board. 🙂
In the past I think that the French used to import Hungarian grapes for wine that was bottled in France and sold to NA as French wine. I have no issues with the practice.
Thanks , I knew they had a vineyard there
This reminds me a quote from many years ago on reason.com on a similar issue:
“A people that needs the government to tell it what ‘BBQ’ is is no longer free in any sense of the word”.
It costs a whack of money for a winery to be a member of the VQA. So a number of the smaller wineries don’t subscribe, but they make 100% local product, and some of it is very good. Searching around and finding them is fun too. Besides, 95% of wine purchases are consumed within an hour and a half of purchase anyway, so only winos (oenophiles) who take the time to let a bottle mature for four or five years really care what they are drinking. And some of the VQA stuff can be on the dodgy side.
Importing grapes for making wine is a common practice in both France and Australia. Wine labels are very descriptive and identify the source of grapes and country of manufacture. If they don’t then don’t buy the wine. If you’re buying a wine that is priced around $9-$10. It is either a CIC (cellared in Canada) product, or a new world varietal blend (Argentina, Chile), or a a high volume growing and manufacturing country like Italy or Spain. These are not high quality products by any means. No one is going to confuse them with VQA, Appellation Controlee, DOC or any other regional or country of origin designation.
I should clarify that the practice is much more common in France. It has not been necessary in Australia recently because of an over supply of domestic grapes. They’ve actually pulled up vines to reduce production.
In most countries in Europe you can buy decent wine for about 3 euros a bottle. I remember this from being in Germany where the beer is a comparable price to Canada but the wine is priced like bottles water.
“I should clarify that the practice is much more common in France.”
It’s quite common throughout Europe. It’s a worldwide practice and there’s nothing particularly wrong with it unless the wine is being advertised as something it’s not.
If I buy a cheap bottle of table wine that says WHITE WINE on the label (or possibly even CHARDONNAY) and makes no other claim of origin, I’m not going to be shocked and dismayed when, on close inspection I read: “A blend of domestic and imported…”
But if I buy a more expensive wine that claims to be, say, Italian, and has a region of origin clearly marked, I’m going to be quite upset if it turns out they’ve tossed a tanker ship of Tunisian grape mash in there (this is not a criticism of Tunisia; they make some very good rosés.).
All that to say: for Ontario and BC wine we have a VQA system in place as “lance” notes. If wine buyers are too bored or illiterate to read the labels, then CAVEAT EMPTOR.
“Too bad wine in Canada is not priced similarly to what wine is priced at in Europe.”
In truth, there’s no chance of ever getting what you’ve paid for when it comes to buying wine in Canada.
It has nothing at all to do with the labelling or the contents and everything to do with the massively prohibitive taxes on every bottle, whether cheap plonk or fine Bordeaux.
Canadians pay far more than they should have to for wine but neither the Federal government nor the provincial governments are ever going to ease up on that particular cash cow.
(The laughable thing about legalizing pot is that you just know our dear governments will simply regulate and then tax the hell out of it. The result will inevitably be – irony of ironies – a resurgence in illegal grow-ops and trafficking as the hippy-dippy potheads come to realize they’ve been cheerfully screwed by their new friends in government.)
Lemme tell yee.
Retiring for a time in Deep South of Okanagan, for lack of much activity, picked grapes for Osoyoos La Rose. A small job for about two weeks in the fall for maybe 5-6 years. Bottled the same wine two years later for about the same term.
Osoyoos La Rose is one of the premier wines of Canada. It is grown in north of part of Osoyoos just below the Crowsnest Hwy.
It is 100% Canadian wine, blended from 3 or 4 different grapes grown in the same vineyard.
On the other hand there is a major bbbbig winery in north of Oliver. Some years ago they imported wine in tankers from Chile, then they tried to pass it off as a Canadian wine. The Chileans got the drift of it and got so mad, they wanted their wine back.
Just one more thing, the Osoyoos La Rose is picked by hand, most of the bbbbig wine is picked by machines that shake the hell out of the grape plants.
Other than that, picking grapes in Okanagan is interesting if not a happening. The crowd you deal with is mixed bag of retired, young pot heads, all knowing wannabees, imports of all kinds and general fun.
So I am supposed to oppose country-of-origin labeling for beef, but support it for wine? Okaaay.
who the hell knows where anything comes from, except your own back yard?
the whole system is rigged. Try to buy a Nova Scotia wine in Ontario… crickets. Actually for the first time saw some BC wine in Ontario but it was a “featured” wine. Truth is the whole system is rigged up the hoop. And the same goes for craft beer. Just as Egg, milk, and cheese marketing boards control the system, the alcohol is the same.
I thought this was going to be about Violent Queer Activists?