Maybe this is a good time to remind federal candidates that wine drinkers are voters, too, that we're tired of liquor boards prying, in the name of federal laws, into the cellars of the nation. That Canadians deserve access to great domestic wines regardless of which province or territory they call home.
It has come to light that two provincial liquor boards recently cracked down on a pair of B.C. wineries for the unconscionable violation of shipping small quantities of premium wine directly to out-of-province customers.
Specifically fingered by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Manitoba Liquor Control Commission were Mission Hill Family Estate and Red Rooster.
The legal basis?
An absurd Prohibition-era statute.
That law makes it illegal for anyone to send or carry beverage alcohol across a provincial border without the consent of the government in the destination province.
That bottle of Okanagan red you picked up at the tasting room and bundled into a suitcase for the trip home to Nova Scotia? Contraband.
Known as the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, the legislation was passed in 1928 as a concession to temperance zealots who may have lost the Prohibition battle but clearly won the war, upholding Canada's international reputation as a country of repressed do-gooders.
"In principle, the law is so absurd," said Mark Hicken, a Vancouver lawyer who maintains the website WineLaw.ca. "That's a really, really Draconian power to have."
It's so absurd that most liquor boards paid scant attention to the law.
After all, consumers generally don't buy wine by phone or over the Internet to save on the liquor board markups. Most want access to small-production wines not available for sale in local stores. Buying direct, in fact, tends to cost more because wineries charge full retail and the customer pays for shipping on top of that.
Then the LCBO decided to suck the fun out of the great rare-Canadian-wine hunt.
"We are required to ensure that suppliers abide by the law," LCBO spokesman Chris Layton said, adding that the board's phone call to Mission Hill roughly five months ago "was not in any way, shape or form threatening or heavy-handed." He said the board would have been remiss in its obligations if it had not warned the winery to alter its website to block out-of-province orders. In short, the LCBO was once again just doing the right thing - even though it appears to have initiated the crackdown and was not acting in response to a chorus of public complaints.
Curiously, the LCBO even went beyond the call of duty, overstepping its provincial jurisdiction to snitch on Red Rooster to the Manitoba commission.
"It was something that was brought to our attention by the LCBO," said Diana Soroka, manager of communications at the MLCC. "We in turn spoke with the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch and pointed out the fact that this was in contravention of not only our liquor act and regulations, but also B.C.'s."
Talk about killjoys. One of the biggest pleasures collectors have today is to join winery clubs, where typically a subscriber gets first shot at limited-release, high-end wines as well as access to specialty products - say, an experimental lot of sangiovese.
"This whole thing is squabbling over really minor amounts," said David Enns, co-owner and winemaker at Laughing Stock Vineyards, one of the few B.C. boutique wineries that prefers to sell its top wine, a $39 red called Portfolio, through the LCBO in Ontario (where it was recently priced at $55, thanks to added LCBO and distributor markups). But he says the bureaucracy of securing a licensed Ontario distributor is more trouble than most of his competitors can tolerate. "Most of the other boutique wineries aren't even interested in doing the paperwork."
