Canada has never been particularly good at scandals. And so it was with the great “cellared in Canada” wine fiasco. The squawking was over almost before it started. And, if you ask me, it wasn't much of a scandal in the first place.
Responding to a sudden chorus of consumer complaints, British Columbia and Ontario this month declared war on bottles made with cheap foreign grapes that traditionally were stocked on or near domestic-product shelves. About 40 such brands, typically made with juice from lower-cost regions such as Chile or Australia, are sold by Canadian companies, including Naked Grape from Vincor Canada, French Cross from Andrew Peller Ltd. and Sonora Ranch from Artisan Wine Co.
If you've ever bought one of those brands for a 100-mile dinner, you goofed big time. Ontario law requires that just 30 per cent of the juice in cellared in Canada wines be domestic, while B.C. law requires not a drop of domestic content. You should have bought a wine emblazoned with the Vintners Quality Alliance, or VQA, logo, which guarantees 100-per-cent domestic content and always has.
Lest I appear to be anything but a consumer advocate on this issue, let me say first that I support the initiatives. Clearer labels were necessary and separate store sections are good.
But this has been a tempest in a crystal decanter. Canada has a long history of importing bulk wine and grapes. Governments supported the practice largely to stimulate cash flow for new winery investments, and that's happened. The current “cellared in Canada” designation was endorsed by a broad coalition of growers, winemakers and government officials when it was hammered out in the mid-1990s.
But recently a number of boutique producers have been making noise about the plight of trying to market $50 pinot noirs alongside $8 and $9 bargain wines that appear to come from the same province. Admittedly, not an easy sell.
But few consumers or politicians seemed to care – until Jancis Robinson rode into town. The high-profile British wine writer visited B.C.'s Okanagan Valley this summer.
She followed up with a scathing column on her website under the headline “The Canadian con contd [continued].” Vincor was subsequently lambasted in the B.C. legislature for pasting its Olympic-sponsorship logo on bottles containing foreign juice – inventory that has since been voluntarily pulled.
“I think it is doing a disservice to real Canadian wine and its reputation abroad to continue with this misleading practice,” Ms. Robinson wrote. “It is just so difficult to take Canadian producers seriously when they are allowed to mislead the wine-buying public to this extent.”
I'll grant her the “disservice” part. But the rest of her complaint strikes me as unfair and, frankly, patronizing. Difficult to take Canadian producers seriously? Really? A Briton need not fly thousands of kilometres to British Columbia to uncover scandal in the wine industry. She need only cross the English Channel.
Here's a riddle. France is the world's third-largest importer of Sicilian wine, almost all of it in bulk. Ever encounter a bottle of Sicilian vino on your French travels? Didn't think so. I don't want to suggest all or even most of France's many struggling winemakers are so unscrupulous as to goose their juice with richly coloured, high-alcohol stuff from Italy's sunny south. But the Sicilian paradox would be interesting to ponder next time you're sipping an unusually rich glass of the house “Burgundy” at a French bistro.
